Managing projects in a functional organization

Abstract

Functional organisations, where the employees are grouped based on skills and job type, are useful to increase knowledge sharing within the groups. I.e. a functional group with programmers allows the programmers to help and learn from one another during working hours. This results in more specialized groups with self-increasing skills, though limiting the connection between people with different skill sets. Divisional organisations, where the employees are divided into groups based on location, product or market instead, have a broad variety of people with different skills in each group. This allows for better interactions among the different skill sets during working hours but takes away the knowledge sharing with like-minded people.

This article highlights the common challenges that a project manager must deal with when doing projects in a functional organization.Projects are generally complex and require people with various skills to be done. Thus, the divisional organisation structure seems like the better fit for projects, as the need for inter-group communication is far less crucial. In a functional organization, all groups involved with the project have to be in close communication with one another in order to maintain a common direction for the project. This is where the project manager becomes important.

Introduction and background

Managers deal with numerous different challenges and problems when supervising the employees and trying to set and achieve departmental goals while also complying with the goals and strategy of the organization. This applies to both functional managers and divisional managers. In this article, the focus is on the challenges that follows with doing projects in functional organizations. According to the well renowned standard for project management, PRINCE2, a project is always cross-functional and thus requires a team of people with different skill sets to work together in order to introduce a change that will affect others outside the project team. The standard also states that "Projects often cross the normal functional divisions within an organization [...]". This means that in a functional organization, projects may sometimes be purely functional projects and can be contained within a functional group and supervised by the functional manager. In this case, there is no room for a project manager. However, most projects will be cross-functional and will often span every department of the organization and perhaps even external workforce.

In order to discuss the role of the project manager in a functional organization, it is necessary to understand what a functional organization is. The next section introduces the general types of organizational structures along with the roles of the project manager in each structure.

Organizational structure

The term "organizational structure" covers the formal system of task and job reporting relationships between employees and how the organizations resources should be spent to obtain its goals. The structure is determined by managers, typically based on the four factors described by the contingency theory; organizational environment, strategy, technology and human resources. This process is described by the term "organizational design" which includes job design (division of the tasks required to run the organization into jobs) and design of the organizational structure. Overall, there are two distinct types of organizational structures; divisional and functional. However, large and complex organisations can create matrix structures which combine divisional and structural elements (see Figure 1). The final design is determined so that it maximizes the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization.

Figure 1: A) Model displaying the structure of a functional organization, B) Model displaying the structure of a divisional organization, C) Model displaying the matrix structure of a functional organization with cross-functional project teams. Each organization has to define a between managers to ensure a clear line of power. The models are created by the author of this article and are based on content from "Essentials of Contemporary Management"

Functional structure

Grouping the jobs in the organization based on skill requirements, so that employees with resembling skill sets work together, is the idea of the functional structure (see Figure 1A). A functional organization is composed of all the departments that are required for the organization to deliver its products, being goods or services. This structure makes it easy for functional managers to evaluate the performance of the employees in their respective departments, since all their employees can be evaluated on the same factors. Furthermore, each department can be more specialized due to knowledge-sharing among the employees.

A vehicle manufacturing company with a functional structure would include a marketing department, a procurement department, a production department and an engineering department etc. The performance of each department in this structure would be higher compared to the divisional structure. Another benefit is that tasks or projects which are completed within functional departments might often share common attributes and will be completed faster due to increased collaboration among like-minded employees.

Divisional structure

In larger organizations, which begin to produce a wider range of goods or services and deal with a larger variety of customers, functional managers might become so busy supervising their departments and keeping up with departmental goals, that they lose sight of the organizational goals and strategy. This reduces efficiency and effectiveness and this is where the divisional structure becomes useful (see Figure 1B). Rather than having large functional units dealing with large numbers of different tasks, divisional departments can be implemented to split the number of tasks out to i.e. product specific departments.

Instead of having a marketing department that sells all types of products from the organization, there would be departments for each product type employing a limited number of marketing experts along with production-, engineering-, and procurement experts specialized in the product of their department. The product manager would then have a more manageable amount of tasks to supervise. Though, the cost of this structure is the lack of knowledge-sharing which results in departments with reduced skill performance.

However, it is a necessary structure to keep the departments aligned with the organizational strategy and to provide the highest possible level of efficiency and effectiveness. As a side benefit, doing cross-functional projects in a divisional structure can be easier, since a project can be contained within a department instead of being cross-departmental. An organization that is build entirely upon cross-functional projects rather than day-to-day operations can thus also be viewed as a divisional organization.

Matrix structure

Somewhere in between the functional and divisional structures lies a loosely defined matrix structure as described by PMI. The matrix structure is an arbitrary combination between the functional and the divisional structures and has its benefits and disadvantages. According to PMI, there is no "better" structure generally speaking, but some organizational forms have better chances for working than others. Which one it will be is also affected by the type of tasks the organization will be performing. A classic matrix structure is a functional organization with cross-functional projects and project managers (see Figure 1C). The main concern with the matrix structure is, that each employee involved with a project will answer to two managers - the functional manager and the project manager.

Project management in functional organizations

Projects

Now that the functional structure is presented, this section deals with projects and how they exist in functional organizations and how they are managed. According to the PRINCE2 standard, the definition of a project is: “A temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed business case”. It is important to distinguish between the term organization when used in this article and when used in the standard. When used in this article, the term refers to a permanent business-like organization such as a company. When used in the PRINCE2 standard, organization refers to the temporary concept of a project team. So, the standard’s definition of a project is a temporary team created to deliver business products according to a business plan. The key point here, is product. If a team in a functional organization is to deliver a product, it would require people from all the departments in the organization. Thus, all projects in functional organizations are cross-functional and involves most, if not all, departments of the organization and will require project managers. An organization that can do a project within a single department would by definition be a product divisional organization.

According to the standard, there are six project performance aspects that need to be managed :

Costs. As projects are uncertain and that knowledge is gained throughout the project, the initial costs budget cannot possibly be fulfilling. Managing costs during the projects to avoid overspending or to save resources is therefore an important aspect.

Timescales. All projects have defined start and end dates which are linked with deadlines or promises to relevant stakeholders. Unforeseen risks or opportunities have major impacts on this aspect and it must be monitored to keep potential promises or deadlines.

Quality. Considering the iron triangle, the two formerly mentioned aspects can sometimes only be satisfied by compromising the quality of the delivered product. However, sometimes strict criteria apply to the project deliverables which then have to be considered and managed.

Scope. In large organizations with many different functional departments that each have their own goals and view, it is vital for the project to maintain a well-defined scope. Otherwise the project might not deliver the requested product in the end or it might go beyond the scope and be delayed and over budget.

Benefits. Each project is aimed at providing some benefit when it is done. The project deliverables are not always the benefits themselves but perhaps tools or elements required to obtain those benefits. Thus, the project scope must lie within the purpose of the project so that it achieves the desired return.

Risks. This is perhaps the most important aspect. What can go wrong with the project – delays, overspending, loss of scope, market change etc. Before launching a project, it must be evaluated how much risk the project entails and how much the owner is willing to accept. Risks can ruin projects if not managed properly.

Project managers

The before mentioned standard for project management, PRINCE2, has defined the role of the project manager as follows:

"The project manager is responsible for the day-to-day management of the project within the constraints set out by the project board.
The project manager's prime responsibility is to ensure that the project produces the required products in accordance with the time,
cost, quality, scope, benefits and risk performance goals."

Project management

Common challenges

Organization structural challenges

From an ideal point of view, the functional structure provides the best performing departments. When doing cross-functional projects, however, challenges appear in the functional structure. Every employee is used to respond to their functional manager and is possibly occupied with certain departmental tasks that the functional manager has planned. When the employee is assigned to a project with a project manager, the employee now responds to two managers. According to the PRINCE2 standard, this can be a source of conflict within organizations if there is no clear hierarchy among the managers or if the managers can not come to agreement regarding division of the employee's working hours. This often results with the project manager having to answer to the functional manager, and that affects the level of required management for the involved employees.

Annotated bibliography

The Essentials of Contemporary Management, Chapter 7 (Sixth Edition)

This chapter describes the process of which managers choose organizational structures and what these structures are. It describes benefits and disadvantages to the common structure types and why managers need to solve related issues.