Mød Caihong (Helen) fra Kina

Bringing 3G to China with a virtual team!

Managing a multi-site team adds excitement to a project. In each phase of the project, you have so many more things to consider and co-ordinate than in a normal project, and there is a lot of communication that cannot be done face-to-face.

Therefore it was a great challenge for me when I was made project manager of a project that involved Helsinki, Beijing and Chengdu, with four colleagues participating from each site.

Our task was to provide our customer with a new 3G core network function by developing and testing one network element.

Although we were so far away from each other – we only worked together for a few days to get know each other in person – we managed to work closely by e-mail, phone, SMS, company internal messages etc.

The atmosphere among my colleagues and team-mates was excellent. Everyone was committed to doing what needed to be done, and we all trusted each other. We focused our efforts and very much enjoyed the whole journey together.

I really had stretched my planning and managing skills, and with my colleagues’ high level of competence we got things done very efficiently. Six months ahead of schedule our customer had the function in use in their networks, and we had brought China one step closer to meeting 3G standards and provided a more complete service to end-users.

Liu Caihong (Helen)
Chengdu, China

Name	Liu Caihong (Helen)
Age	35
Current job title	Network R&D Chengdu Service Unit Manager
Academic qualifications	Master Degree on Computer Science
Interests	Reading, Travelling, Watching Movies
Place of work	Tieto Chengdu, P.R.China
Joined Tieto	July 21st, 2008