In any project where a person or group of people working brings different assumption in their work ie. either in product development or team behavior is called as multicultural project. The project manager may have to deal with participants from different cultures and their expectations and behaviors.

Multicultural projects require more formal requirements and architecture reviews than other projects. The formalism here helps to reduce the risk of communications problems. In multicultural projects project managers try to manage the differences by mandating common practices and techniques across the project.

In multicultural project not all the participants have to do the same things at the same time, the team manager may separate them in different groups based on cultural differences. However, all multicultural project teams have to agree on major milestones, and the criteria for those milestones.

Major Problems of Multicultural Projects:

• Communication during the project: Communication is one of the main barrier in Multicultural Projects. For a project to be successful in future there should be proper flow of communication between the team members. For this project manager should define a common mode of communication or apply different strategies to overcome this barrier. But before deciding a common communication language project manager should see to it that, is everyone familiar with the language chosen or how fluency they can speak the common language.

• Building trust: In the beginning of any project it is very hard to establish trust between the participants. Especially when geography and culture separate teams it may develop lavck of trust can be a huge obstacle to project success Project managers can use several techniques to help establish trust, including asking the project group what rumors they’ve heard. Many people may not speak up at first, but by asking this question at every meeting, the group will come to understand that you genuinely want to hear about potential problems and concerns .

• Uneven ability to use common tools: This may lead to inability to share designs, source code, tests, and any other project information. When some members of the project team can’t use the project resources, they may resent the people who can use the project resources. In addition, they may stop trying to share their work with the rest of the project team.

The project manager can make sure everyone understands how to use the tools by making people in different groups visit one another to show how they use the tool back at their office. This type of visit helps people see new ways to use the tools and also how others in the project use them. Such sharing build trust and confidence as well as reduce some jealousy and all different groups might develop as one group.