Project Management Orientation - Team Management(Concepts-1)

 

 

What Is a Team?

A team is a group of individuals working toward a common goal.  Your team will include people from your organization, suppliers, clients, and the project sponsor, each of whom bring their own skills to the team. 
As the project manager, you must ensure that the team members recognize the skills of the other team members and the ways in which team members depend on each other.

When a group of individuals truly becomes a team, they are committed to the team's values and objectives.  They learn to work well together, they enjoy working together, and most importantly they produce the high-quality results that are key to a successful project.

Organization Types

The type of organization you work in affects the project manager’s ability to deliver a project successfully.  The project manager must understand the challenges involved in managing a project within various organizational structures and must anticipate that over the life of a project the organizational structure might change.  There are three types of organizational structures:  functional, projectized, and matrix.  These are described on the following page.

 

Functional Organizations

In a functional organization, the staff is grouped hierarchically by specialty.  The following is an OBS (Organizational Breakdown Structure) for a functional organization.  This is also known as a conventional line organization.   

In a functional organization, each employee has one supervisor.  Functional organizations still have projects, but the cross-functional decisions are made by the functional management.

 

Projectized Organizations 

In a projectized organizational structure, the project manager has full authority to assign priorities and direct the work of individuals assigned to the project, as shown in the following OBS (Organizational Breakdown Structure).  The project manager controls the resources.  They report directly to the project manager, not to a functional manager.  Directing work is easier because there are no battles with functional managers.
The common problem with the projectized environment is that there is not enough work to justify having all the people dedicated to the project.  Except for very large projects, few organizations have projectized structures because they are more expensive to operate and less efficient than some other types of organizational structures.

 

Matrix Organizations 

A matrix organizational structure is a blend of functional and projectized organizations, as shown in the following OBS (Organizational Breakdown Structure).  In a matrix organizational structure, the project manager shares responsibility with the functional managers to assign priorities and direct the work of the people assigned to the project.

Team members on a matrix project often have mixed loyalty because they have two bosses:  the project manager and their functional manager.