Managing international usability projects: Cooperative strategy

Abstract

Multi-national projects face many challenges, such as finding and coordinating resources, managing logistics in different countries, defining research methodology, controlling project cost, and dealing with cross-cultural issues. Project managers can choose among different approaches to such ventures: centralized, decentralized and cooperative. We discuss our experience in managing international usability teams using the cooperative strategy. With four participating countries and three languages used for conducting user studies, bringing the project together becomes both a challenge and a valuable lesson. The report details the strategy applied and specifically addresses the setup and dataanalysis stages. We reflect on our experience from two viewpoints: of the global project manager and of a local coordinator. For others to draw on our learning, we summarize both positive and negative project lessons.