Teaching International Project Management

Observation: 

    - In present project teams, students speak the same language and have received same teaching,
    - Members of international projects use different languages and heterogeneous methodologies, and belong to different cultures

Objectives:

    - Initiate concrete teaching for international projects management with foreign schools/faculties of engineering
    - Typically, project teams will be formed by students coming from 3 (?) different countries

Goals:

    - « Collaborative design involving at same level people from different languages and cultures  »

Content

Nowadays, modern enterprises involve more and more graduated  engineers in projects in which several persons from different origins, cultures and  countries have to collaborate conjointly. In this vein, young professionals often underestimate the additional challenges and requirements tying in with  this form of work.

Participants who take part in this practical course  will cooperate with other students from international universities by  commonly working on a software engineering project during a period of  approximately 2 months. In this context, international groups of 3-5 students are  formed. Besides solving a task in the domain of software engineering, each  student team has to leverage the project management methodologies in order to achieve  the stated objectives. The complementary presentation and report sum up  essential concepts and results of their work. As means of communication, the  professional video conference systems hosted at the universities as well as personal  computer and mobile software (e.g. Skype, Windows Messenger, netviewer, etc.) are used. This international project starts at the beginning ofOctober 2009 and finishes at mid of December 2009.

This international project is embedded in the NEREID cooperation between  the Departements in Information Technology of the five universities listed below:

• Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, France,
• University of Applied Sciences Esslingen, Germany,
• Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Puebla, Mexico,
• Universidad  Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Chile,
• Technical University of Munich, Germany.

NEREID is an acronym for Network of Engineering univeRsities  Educating in Intercultural Design.

In the Greek mythology, the Nereids are fifty  nymphs who dwell in the Mediterranean Sea. These beautiful women were always  friendly and helpful towards sailors/navigators fighting perilous storms.  Belonging to the retinue of Poseidon, they are believed to be able to prophesize.

Projects proposals

Subsequent list contains all software engineering projects which are carried out by different student teams between October and December 2009.

• Picture-based itineraries
• University foreign relations map
• Internationalization and localization of a knowledge management collaboration toolInternationalization and localization
• Web support for a cadaster system.

For more details, contact Robert Laurini and/or Béatrice Rumpler.