As a Project Manager in charge of a software development team
As a Project Manager in charge of a software development team, what form of organizational structure do you recommend to work within to achieve the most effective product delivery system to your clients?
Not all organizations and teams run in the same way but instead each of it runs in their own way as a result of their effort to find a way that suits their respective needs. No doubt in this journey some achieve success while other get hurt. The same philosophy is applicable to any software development team as well and hence the kind of organizational structure that should be adopted to get the most effective productivity is dependent on individual firm’s needs and size.
However on a broad basis there are basically three forms of organizational structure that are applied in general across project management deliverables CITATION Sta111 l 1033 (Writer, Project Management Organizational Structures Paper, 2011). Hence in this case as well it would be the very specifics of the teams, project, organization size that would be used to determine the ideal structure needed for this case. In the coming section we will review the three broad possibilities and present their application criteria in general.
Functional: This is the most popular and easiest to achieve form of organizational structure. It is ideal for small organizations that make available small number of goods and services and in cases where all required sections are close in terms of geography. In this case the organization is broken up into number of small teams/unit based on their specialty skillset. Since this structure ensures creation of what is known as functional manager, it enables a structure where there is only one boss. This in turn results in easier management of resources and avoidance of conflict of interest and hence better productivity through clear accountability. The only disadvantage of it remains in it offering limited authority to each project manager and limited career path for them.
Matrix: It an offspring of combination of functional and products organizational structure. It’s ideal for project driven companies like construction. In this case project manager has great amount of power which is directly coming from general management but at the same time it requires project manager to have total responsibility and accountability of project success. This structure allows for quick response to changes, conflicts and other needs thanks to its strong and structured ground rules in place. All conflicts are resolved through hierarchal referral as per its severity.
Pure Project: This is a perfect structure for an organization which has fewer numbers of projects but that of longer duration. A single project manager in this case is responsible for conducting all activity related to project and has fully autonomy in decision making and execution and just report to program manager. It is the fastest reaction time that ensures sticking to schedule but it suffers from technological growth as core functional group structure is missing.
In light of the three popular choices that we discussed I think the Matrix form would be ideal for the case presented since it is the accountability of project manager to make a project success when everything else has been made available to him. This is more applicable since the firm is complete software projects based for all its business.
How should a PM decide which problems deserve being reported to the top management and which are not worth the trouble when attempting to “Never Surprise the Boss”?
The actual genre of problem and even the actual specific problem that is worth reporting to management again is similar case like organizational structure i.e. depends on the structure, the responsibilities, accountability that has been entrusted with project manager. This is so because if some genre of issue is responsibility of another project manager as per structure the even if the issue is serious enough, for the sake of formal process it cannot be directly reported to management. We all know that there are four broader areas of issues that a project management has to deal with regularly. Those being “Bugs and issues in the project”, “changing and ambiguous requirement of project by client”, “project issues related to supplier performance aspect” and “project specific team issues” CITATION Sim07 l 1033 (Wallace, 2007).
Now reviewing this broad classification, one should be able to reflect upon which issues should be reported to management and which should not be. However as we mentioned above, it is actually the very structure and accountability distribution that should determine this. However looked from general perspective the issues that should get reported to management by project management in line with “Never Surprise the Boss” policy should be the one which is likely to impact the final project outcome and significant financial aspect. Hence ideally it should be issues like significant resource crunch, resource capability issues, supplier inability to deliver and significant change on the client part on open features that shall be reported to management to keep them informed of concerns and seek their advice/intervention wherever needed.
This is so because the mentioned issues are something which when not handled with needed attention and timeliness, it could result in a concerned project to become a failure or a loss making initiative and both of them would be non-ideal case of management. Hence timely information to management even if it’s beyond their capability to do anything should not put the blame on project manager and team as to why they were hiding this till date. However it is important to realize that every management and every organization has its structure, hierarchies, team formation and rules in place CITATION HKe06 l 1033 (Kerzner, 2006). Adherence to these structure and rules are requirement of theirs and hence the actual issues that gets reported and escalated to management are something that is dependent on it.
In Matrix form of management, at what stage can the PM release the design architects of his project? And what is the process of doing so?
On the similar lines of what we looked at in the above two cases, it is the very details which will ensure the exact decision making point. This is so because not only the design architects have different roles within themselves as per the size of project, their role and need also depends upon the organizational structure and the project development methodology adopted. In general when it comes to projects architects they can be distinctively defined as Chief Architect, Applications Architect, Data Architect, Information Architect, Internet Architect, Network Architect CITATION Sta011 l 1033 (Writer, 2001), Systems Architect, Security Architect, and Process Architect & Project Architects.
The roles, responsibilities and deliverables of each of them should have been obvious by the very terminology being used by them. There is various kind of roles across which he could deliver depending upon the organizational structure and development methodologies. The broad range of possible deliverable includes “acting as a technical leader”, “acting as a business objective mapper”, “decision making authority”, “act as negotiator”, “act as communication channel” and “quality assurance responsibilities” CITATION Pet06 l 1033 (Eeles, 2006) etc. We know that in a matrix form of organizational structure it is the project manager with whom the whole responsibility of project lies with and he is answerable to it.
The question to ponder upon in this is state is would be right to release design architect post design approval of all aspect by all stakeholder or should he be kept along and is yes for how long? There is no certain answer to it without specification because if waterfall method of development tis followed ideally the design architect should be released post all elements of his deliverables being approved by all stakeholders. However if Agile methodology is being adopted then inputs and need of this design architect would be needed every now and hence he can only be released only when the whole of project has been design, developed, delivered and approved.
The ideal way to release a design architect is to ask him to pass on all dependencies, architecture, infrastructure and other technologies aspect in document forms. This documentation should only be done post all his deliverable being tested and approved by respective division heads who would be taking charge of project development from that point post his release from respective project.
Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY Eeles, P. (2006, 03 15). Characteristics of a software architect. Retrieved 10 29, 2012, from IBM: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/mar06/eeles/
Kerzner, H. (2006). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. Wiley.
Wallace, S. (2007). ePMBook.
Writer, S. (2001). Architecture Roles and Responsibilities. Retrieved 10 29, 2012, from stevendwright.home.comcast.net: http://stevendwright.home.comcast.net/~stevendwright/ArchRoles.htm
Writer, S. (2011). Project Management Organizational Structures Paper. Retrieved 10 29, 2012, from www.articlearn.com: http://www.articlearn.com/project-management-organizational-structures-paper/
