Project Management Orientation – Team Management

What Is a Team?

A team is a group of individuals working toward a common goal. Your team will
include people from your organization, suppliers, clients, and the project sponsor,
each of whom bring their own skills to the team.
As the project manager, you must ensure that the team members recognize the skills
of the other team members and the ways in which team members depend on each
other.

When a group of individuals truly becomes a team, they are committed to the team's
values and objectives. They learn to work well together, they enjoy working
together, and most importantly they produce the high-quality results that are key to
a successful project.

Organization Types

The type of organization you work in affects the project manager’s ability to deliver a
project successfully. The project manager must understand the challenges involved
in managing a project within various organizational structures and must anticipate
that over the life of a project the organizational structure might change. There are
three types of organizational structures: functional, projectized, and
matrix. These are described on the following page.

Functional Organizations

In a functional organization, the staff is

grouped hierarchically by specialty. The
following is an OBS (Organizational Breakdown
Structure) for a functional organization. This is
also known as a conventional line
organization.

In a functional organization, each employee has one supervisor. Functional

organizations still have projects, but the cross-functional decisions are made by the
functional management.

Projectized Organizations
In a projectized organizational structure, the project manager has full authority to
assign priorities and direct the work of individuals assigned to the project, as shown
in the following OBS (Organizational Breakdown Structure). The project manager
controls the resources. They report directly to the project manager, not to a
functional manager. Directing work is easier
because there are no battles with functional
managers.
The common problem with the projectized
environment is that there is not enough work
to justify having all the people dedicated to the
project. Except for very large projects, few
organizations have projectized structures
because they are more expensive to operate
and less efficient than some other types of organizational structures.

Matrix Organizations

A matrix organizational structure is a blend of functional and projectized

organizations, as shown in the following OBS (Organizational Breakdown
Structure). In a matrix organizational structure, the project manager shares
responsibility with the functional managers to assign priorities and direct the work of
the people assigned to the project.

Team members on a matrix project often have

mixed loyalty because they have two
bosses: the project manager and their
functional manager.