It’s the holiday season and I’m in the USA for a couple of weeks enjoying a rest.  The Western year in China ended with a rush.  More than one years effort, at the Chinese software company at which I work, in preparing for an SEI CMMI certification culminated with a one week long formal assessment which ended the day of our Christmas party on December 23rd, and the result of which was presented to the team on the day after on Christmas Eve. 

Well, from the general attitude at the Christmas party, you would not have guessed that such an important event was scheduled for the next day.  There was no sign of nervousness even though the final result was very much unknown.  Christmas in China!  Based on the decorations in the malls, hotels and around the city you’d think China was a very Christian place.  It has more to do with the shopping and the opportunity for yet another holiday occasion.  The character of our Christmas party was very much like parties on other such occasions.  A multiple course Chinese dinner followed by what might be called “amateur hour” except in this case it was more like three hours.  It was three hours of singing, dancing, skits, comedy acts, prizes, and even a short set by a rock band.  And these are for the most part quite good.  Just to be clear the performers  are all our employees and all amateurs and this is pretty typical.  I find that the Chinese have a great appreciation for and involvement in the arts.  Going to Christmas parties, New Years parties, Spring Festival parties, wedding parties (you name it) is like going to a variety show.  And then there are all the budding Perry Comos. There’s a KTV on every corner and in every home.

So back to the CMMI assessment.  In these things you always have strengths and weaknesses.  Based on my earlier posts you’d think that project management would be a potential problem area.  It’s an area that requires more focus  and the inspectors agreed.  One of the more interesting questions I got from the assessors during the week was the day after the Christmas party.  They could not believe that the project managers singing and dancing at the party were the same project managers they had spoken to during the week.  The assessors said that “it was like pulling teeth” to gather information.  Surely they could not all be so shy.  The issues seem to be language, fear of embarrassment or loss of face, and discomfort with the frank and direct approach employed by the assessors.  (This is a problem in a normal workday with communications between expats and Chinese much less a formal assessment by expats.)  We had prepared in advance with practice interviews and training sessions but this is a constant challenge in my view - the tension between being open and direct and in maintaining face.

So we continue to focus attention on training project managers.  We have two projects in planning.  The 1st  project is mapping the CMMI to the PMBOK and marrying it with our Quality Management System in the form of a course.  The 2nd project is developing more specific guidelines for employing agile methodologies in our development projects.

So now that the Western New Year is almost past, it’s time to start planning for the Chinese New Year.  At least the assessment is out of the way for now.  The assessment team came away with their own lessons learned about the impact of culture on the conduct of these assessments.  The next time they do an assessment in China they want it to be just before the Chinese New Year so that they can learn even more.