Project managers must be aware that their actions will have some organizational culture implications. First, they have to interact with the culture of their parent organization as well as the subcultures of various departments (e.g., marketing, accounting). Second, they have to interact with the project’s client or customer organizations. Finally, they have to interact in…
Organizational Culture, How to Define, Implement and Nurture
The decision for combining a discussion of project management structures (you can read it here) and organizational culture can be traced to a conversation I had with two project managers who work for a medium-sized IT firm. They were developing a new operating platform that would be critical to the future success of their company.…
Project Plan, is it important to have one?
Well, every course, article and training provider out there is stressing about the importance of having a project plan. It’s as simple as that. A project plan will help you plan, execute and control your project, at least that is the official definition. I will like to state my personal view on the subject as…
Functional Organizational Structure
One approach to organizing projects is to simply manage them within the existing functional organizational structure hierarchy of the organization. Once management decides to implement a project, the different segments of the project are delegated to the respective functional units with each unit responsible for completing its segment of the project (see figure below). Coordination…
How to Organize Projects Within A Matrix Organizational Structure
One of the biggest management innovations to emerge in the past 30 years has been the matrix organizational structure. Matrix management is a hybrid organizational structure in which a horizontal project management structure is “overlaid” on the normal functional hierarchy. The matrix organizational structure In a matrix system, there are usually two chains of command,…
Organizational Structure: Do You Belong?
Once management approves a project then the question becomes, how will the project be implemented. This article examines three different organizational structure mechanics used by firms to implement projects: functional organization, dedicated project teams, and matrix structure. Although not exhaustive, these organizational structures and their variant forms represent the major approaches for organizing projects. The advantages…
PRINCE2 and Scrum, Integration
There are some papers out there that reference a possible integration between PRINCE2 and SCRUM. While I do agree and feel that it is possible and even recommended I feel that the subject has net been treated with sufficient depth. Most of the papers suggest that the PRINCE2 process ‘Managing Product Delivery’ is place where…
Implementing Scrum: Challenges
Organizations that want to make a move to Agile will need to fully understand what is Agile and what challenges are likely to appear on the road to implementing SCRUM. There are a lot of examples where Agile implementations have gone awry and it is costly on so many levels. Implementing SCRUM is not that easy and it…
SCRUM, all you need to know.
Scrum goes back to 1986. It was first defined as “a flexible, holistic product development strategy where a development team works as a unit to reach a common goal” as opposed to a “traditional, sequential approach” in 1986 by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka in the New Product Development Game. They later argued in The…
PRINCE2, all you need to know!
PRINCE2 is an established project management framework that is part of the Best Management Practice (BMP) portfolio of frameworks. The BMP family is formed by a large group of management and delivery frameworks that have been constructed from industry best practices covering wide areas of topics such as portfolio, programme, projects and service management. PRINCE2…