Project organization

A part of understanding the context under purpose.

Abstract

The success of a project is highly dependent of the project organization, which is defined as a clear establishment in the project beginning of the project management team structure along with a communication approach. Maintaining the project organization during the entire project is essential to make the project a success. According to the PRINCE2 standard, the purpose of project organization is to define and establish the project's structure of accountability and responsibilities.

To successfully create and institutionalize a project organization, the project authority should be clearly communicated throughout the project team. This implies that each project team member knows their respective responsibilities. An effective way to vizualize and hence intuitively communicate the organizational structure along with its division of authority is using organization charts (or organigrams). However, this tool illustrates vertical lines of communication, and in practice, communication is far more complex due to informal communication across the organization. Hence this tool is mostly applicable to organizational structure and its responsibility divion rather than constraining the organizational communication.

Big idea

• What is project organization (including essential aspects described), and what is its purpose (why is it important)?
• What consequences occur if project organization is neglected?
• What are the current modern and updated ways of doing this? (This have will be further discussed in applications).

Application

• How should project managers approach project organization?
• What do they need to reflect upon before diving into different methods and tools?
• What different methods/tools exist, and what characterizes each of them?

Limitations

• Critical reflection regarding project organization in general.
• What can each tool/method do, and under what circumstances should they be applied?
• Which tools/methods are a part of the current standards of project organization, and which ones extend the current standards of project organization.

References

• Project Management by Dennis Lock (2013).
• [1] , A. (2017). Managing successful projects with prince2 2017 edition. The Stationery Office Ltd.