:AACE CERTIFICATION 2009-2010:

First of all, it’s a great pleasure to work with the team coming from a different country and educational background. The team shall prepare the work plan in the short period of time using virtual tools and to be submitted to the client in timely fashion. In a week face to face class program, all program members showing a very good commitment to make it happen; share the task, work together as a team, helping each other and setup a preliminary plan. This gives me a confidence that the program able to achieve the objectives according to the program vision and mission, no question about it.

However, the time goes by, face to face program ended and all the members back to their own country and business as usual. Personally I am little bit worry that the team members will back to their day to day work and less commitment to the program. How does it happen? Back to the forming stage (forming – storming – forming – performing) theory, individuals are committed, at most, to their own objective. Members will only invest time in storming activities if they think it is worth it, which is if the collective objectives are as important as their own. Besides, according to Heller and Hindle in “Essential Managers Manual” page 338 DK Publishing 1998, physical distance of the team members directly influence to the chance of the member communication in one period of time. The longest physical distance, the chance to communicate each other will become low.

Is the distance program through virtual tools will work to meet the program objective? I’m personally confidence that the program will success as long as everyone change him/herself to work as a team, committed to the task assigned and maintain a very good communication since communication is all important!

Below are a couple of comments on things that went well and things I think we could have done better

Things that went well
1. Teamwork worked well to produce the project plan. Even the project plan created through virtual tools, frequent communication via e-mail, web and sometimes company cell phone give the evidence that everyone still committed to work together as a group and provide a prompt action to the individual request.
2. Commitment of the members to participate to the team worked well. The team members committed to accomplishing the team mission and expected program objectives. Program Managers, Project Managers and team members are very keen to make this program happen!
3. Openness among the team members. Everyone open to the new ideas and suggestion, helping each other and provide a prompt support on request.
4. Virtual communication worked well. Microsoft office live, Google groups, group blog were setup upfront and its very helpful to the members to share the information and task (even though I’m still struggling to have an access to the group blog due to network restriction).
5. Project controller group worked well to produce a standard weekly report. We face some issues with regard to the standard format but we able to solve them immediately. Nui did a great job on leading project controller team as well as Andi and Joseph for their fully support.

Things We Could Have Done Better
1. I’m personally think that the program expectation still unclear to the team members. Has the client and program manager communicated clearly its expectations for the expected outcome or deliverables? Do team members understand why the project team was created? Do team members clearly understand what they suppose to do by what, when and how?
2. The role of each program member was not clearly stated upfront. Given the fact that we all work together in the same task and no distribution tasks to each of team member.
3. E-mail communications still not focus to the subject causing difficulties to track the previous communication and information.

A very important lesson learned to this program is to create a project plan. I believe that the difficult part of the project is how to create a proper project plan. Once the project plan developed properly then we are in the stage to deliver a success project to the client, otherwise the project will be screwed up with many unplanned changes during project execution and in fact will not meet the project objective, as per GIGO philosophy, Garbage In Garbage Out

Are we able to make a proper project plan through virtual tools? Again, the answer will back to each program member on how to build cultural to work as a virtual team, committed to the task assigned, helping each other, tackle the barriers and maintain a good communication.

Finally, I will borrow what Chris says, we are in the war and we are all the soldiers. We have to prepare ourselves to win this war otherwise we will be smashed into the pieces "winner make things happen, losers merely wait for it to happen".


Sorowako, October 9th, 2009



Muhammad Asril