Overprocessed
Mr. Bowen: Organizations should
have open, honest communications
and encourage change and process
improvement. They should begin by
effectively using lessons learned from
all projects to make process improvements. If the organization can conduct
reviews in an honest, constructive way
by not shooting the messenger and
using it as a learning opportunity for
all, including senior management, the
results can be striking. The next step is
to make project managers change
agents. They should understand the strategic as well as tactical goals and objectives of the organization and constantly be on the lookout for ways to improve processes to meet
those goals and objectives.
When is structure most important?
Mr. Bowen: Structure is always important in the sense
a project manager and a project team should always
have a set of understood processes. One of the key tasks
for a project manager is to make sure this structure is
established, understood, followed and, if necessary,
modified. For organizations that have projects that are
all relatively similar in nature, using a single standard
set of processes that has been refined with lessons
learned has a high payoff in terms of project efficiency
and effectiveness. If there are several different types of
projects, then a flexible structure is needed.
Mr. Chin: I start by looking at three characteristics to
determine the level of structure required: the goals of
the organization, the culture of the organization and
the specific project at hand. An example that might
warrant the most structure would be a weak-matrix,
consensus-driven organization with a long-term
investment perspective, performing relatively repeatable projects. Say a Fortune 500 company working on
manufacturing improvement projects.
Most people have
complained about
the rules at one
point or another,
but many don’t
know what to do
in the absence
of structure.
— Gary Chin, Cross Organizational
Consulting, Portland, Ore., USA
Is there any situation in which structure is not as
important?
Mr. Chin: The opposite of above: a strong matrix,
authoritarian-driven organization with a short-term
investment horizon, performing highly innovative, never-been-done-before product development projects. Say a
start-up high-tech company with an exit strategy of being
acquired by an Internet giant in the next 12 months. Of
course, these examples are broad generalizations.
Mr. Bowen: When an organization has a new, unique
project that varies significantly from previous ones in
terms of size, technology or end product, trying to use previous standard processes probably won’t be effective. Not
only is the standard structure not important in this case,
it can be harmful if inappropriate processes are used. It
requires research into how similar projects have been executed by other organizations and creative thinking in
applying that structure to the current project. Even if
another organization was wildly successful using one
structure, blindly replicating it won’t work in every case.
Does too much emphasis on structure cause companies to
lose their competitive edge?
Mr. Bowen: It can. Companies with an appropriate basic
structure have been found to execute better—on schedule,
budget and performance—than companies with little or
