Project Management - Blog 7 - Organisational Structure

Project Management Structure

Figure 1  Typical Project Organisation Chart

An organisation with an excellent CEO, super hard-working employees, with all the same common goals can still fail if the company has a poor organisational structure. Success, while based on organisation, it is generally the structure that has an influence on project management. This can dictate the level of project management, how decisions are made within the project process, communication of project goals and overall how the leadership or project manager integrates with the project team. The primary goal or objective of this structure is to reduce confusion and any uncertainty that may arise at the initial phase of a project. This structure defines the relationships within the company. Applying this structure and implementing the correct organisation structure is the difficult part of the process and key to having successful projects. Wrongly placed project teams create negative effect on the conclusion of projects.

Functional structure is very similar to a hierarchy type of system where a functional manager has a lot more authority driven decisions on their shoulders whereby the project manager in this type of structure has less decisions or may not even exist. This type of structure would suit both a book publisher or consultancy firm as they would require divisions such as human resources, finance, legal department, sales etc.

Dedicated teams type of organisational structure is whereby let’s say employee A is a member of team 1, he or she is full-time member of team 1. They’re not assigned to different project simultaneously. This would be a super example for let’s say an advertising agency whereby a dedicated team are assigned to one project and until that project is completed they only work on that project in an ideal world. An advertising agency would also suit the next example of a matrix structure, especially if this agency is a multinational.

Matrix structure is probably the most complicated out of the 3 discussed so far. Unlike the traditional hierarchy type of structure, the matrix or grid type of setup include for employees to have numerous reporting relationships generally to several different managers such as product or functional. This type of structure allows specific individuals to be handpicked for specific needs of a project, allows a project team to be more dynamic and view issues from outside the box.

Project Management - Blog 6 - Progress Status Report

 Progress Status Report

Do you value your time? Does your company value money? 
To save time and essentially costly mistakes, ensuring you have your next project status report on point is essential. By utilising templates, PowerPoint, project reporting tools or all three methods is a critical process for effective project management and communications to update the correct people within the project team, including external bodies such as stakeholders and sponsors.

When a decision is made on the format of the report, it is important to keep consistency. Having a regular report assist in the process of keeping a continuous pipeline of critical information in relation to the project status.

So, what does a progress status report contain? 
A good report would start with general information such as project name, the project manager and number of resources complete with milestone reviews. This would include planned milestones, actual milestones and achieved milestones. The report would also give details in relation to any issues, risks and resolutions. In order to have a successful report it must also contain a project summary that involves an updated competition date, costs and any outstanding tasks. These metrics, cost, scope and time are crucial for a progress report to have any substance.

Why is this report useful? 
It is known to allow for effective communication. It provides the project team coherence in relation to information. It allows the management establish metrics that allow proper planning and a method to measure the project progress throughout its life cycle. If the report is kept simple, it will be more effective. Experts advise to not put unnecessary information in the report that is not required, stay on point and include in the report only what is required to be reported on, this is a fundamental part of project management.