 Strategic partnership projects may last up to three years and require very clear agreements, procedures and tools for their management. Hence, strategic partnership requires strategic management. Management is usually coordinated by the applicant organization, acting as the main project coordinator. The management of strategic partnership projects is implemented at both local and international level. Internationally, project management involves the coordination of international activities, ensuring that intellectual outputs are implemented within the timeframe and making the necessary adjustments if needed. The main manager of the project should provide direction and leadership to project partners, develop and maintain the project vision, develop overall policies and ensure their smooth implementation and monitor and evaluate work against objectives. Managers coordinate contracting and reporting processes including the collection of project outcomes, content reports, financial documents, lists of participants and any other evidence needed for interim and final reports. The manager of a strategic partnership must ensure appropriate communication and decision making. Each partner organization locally needs to handle a number of processes to achieve the expected results, define and distribute tasks for the staff, deal with external service providers, ensure timely reporting, monitor the implementation progress and report any inconsistencies, as well as work in close liaison with local partners and target groups of the project. Complex projects like strategic partnership have many processes and tasks with people involved from different countries and mainly working remotely from each other. Therefore, managers of strategic partnerships often make use of the existing online project management tools. These tools help manage data in the cloud without fearing of losing important documents stored locally on someone's computer. They usually have task management functions including reminders, commenting, adding collaborators and even time tracking and reporting. Such tools are invaluable support for project managers, allowing them to automate functions and monitor the project progress in real time. You should look for tools like MindMeister, Trello, Asana, Teamwork, Basecamp, among many others. These tools can save a lot of valuable time for project managers and their costs can be covered from the management budget. Communication The success of strategic partnership projects heavily relies on the effectiveness of communication among partners and with other stakeholders of the project. What, how and when to communicate? What is important to tell a partner and what should be left implicit? What is the level of commitment to a communication process? Why do partnerships that seem to start so well, carried out by the best of friends, sometimes get stuck because of the lack of communication? To what extent is it possible to attempt to understand another culture? It is essential for partners to agree on synchronous and asynchronous communication tools and the frequency of online and in-person meetings. Partners may also have their specific habits or cultural traits in the way they communicate or the way they make decisions in their organizations. With an abundance of communication tools, the consortium may face a situation where project staff from partner organizations use different tools. It is important that all partners agree on the tools to be used. Even if some tools may seem new and unusual, partners should make an effort to learn new and often more efficient ways to manage communication. A two-year project may have an exchange of 20,000 or more messages among people involved in its implementation. That's a lot to handle. Project partners must consider how to do it. Should everyone receive all messages? Should there be targeted messages? How should people get notified about communication concerning a specific task or activity? Both aspects of management and communication must be described in the project proposal. When the project starts, the first partner meeting can be a good moment to get a better understanding of communication peculiarities of each partner and review communication agreements which are defined in the project proposal.