Project Organisation and Learning Flashcards
Dongtan Ecocity: Objectives and Goals
- Dongtan city was never built so they couldn’t see how the technology worked.
• Client: Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC)
• Consultant masterplanner: Arup (UK design consultancy)
• Sustainable ‘demonstrator city’ – cutting carbon emissions shapes urban design
• 40 min travel time to central Shanghai
• Population 500,000 in 2050
• Site: 84 square km
• 3 distinct towns amid parkland and canals
• Population density similar to London
Organisational structures:
- Functional Organisation
2. Matrix Organisation
Functional Organisation characteristics?
• Most common
• Have functions or departments e.g. marketing, finance, engineering
• Marketing product activities will be sitting under head of marketing
• High number, frequency, of products are usually structured in this way
• As a PM, communication will be with senior people at top OR with a particular function
• Quite often end up working with particular function instead of across the whole board
• General management has overview over other functions
e.g. Car manufacturers are very classic
• Toyota – Japanese innovation. There IS innovation happening within the particular functions
• Apple/Samsung/LG wouldn’t be structured in that way
Matrix Organisation
- Functional – all the different functions that we just saw and also have a project at the same time
- You have an overlay of project and functions at the same time so you will be linked to both
- In the exam: there are different variations of matrix structure: WEAK AND STRONG
- Financial resources and how influential is he/she to pull people in
- Matrix – in order to be a matrix structure you would have a combination of the functional areas AND the project environment cutting across as well.
Weak Matrix
- Managers with limited authority assigned to oversee cross-functional aspects of specific projects
- Functional managers maintain control over resources and project areas
- An attempt to alleviate communication issues between functional managers and track overall project progress
Strong (Project) Matrix
- Project managers have primary responsibility
- Functional managers provide technical expertise and assign resources on an as needed basis
- There are ‘mirror’ conflicts between project and functional managers as functional managers have to staff multiple projects with the same expert resource
+ of successful Matrix structure/ - of unsuccessful
+ Facilitate more rapid management responses
+ Support middle managers
+ Generates potential cost savings
- ‘Group decision-making’/slows
- Excessive overheads
- Dual chain of command
- Inefficiency… how do you communicate different messages?
- Working for different PMs potentially
- Multiple styles of leadership… could be confusion there around that as well.
- can get quite expensive – 2 layers of senior management. Functional area managers and project management.
How does Matrix Management work?
- Communication
o Consider project sub-divisions for larger projects - Clear roles for project and line managers
o Consider dual control and evaluation system - Commitment and cooperation
o Leaders who are ‘comfortable’ with lateral decision making - Culture that negotiates open conflict and balance of power
Two types of organisational units:
- Exploitative units: make steady improvements in existing business e.g. car manufacturer – improving existing product.
- Exploratory units: breakthrough innovations – beyond current products or markets e.g. exploring new things like driverless cars.
e.g. Apple do both
iPhone – first iPhone then GENERATIONS of them. Changed the structure of that environment and the whole ecosystem. Apple are good at improving what they already have and also new innovations.
Ambidextrous organisations
establish project teams that are structurally independent units, each having its own processes, structures and cultures, but are integrated into the existing management hierarchy
- 2 types of businesses, one is existing business (improving product… functional), then emerging business
- You need to have a good understanding of who stakeholders are, risks, how the organisations you are working with are structured.
Project learning?
- Last crucial activity as a project team
e. g. link it to Arup from earlier (involved in planning and design phase of eco-city; didn’t get through to construction phase but they learned from it)
e. g. splitting of core team into different projects after vanguard project and splitting/sharing their expertise.
Issue with learning?
A lot of individuals move from organisations as they move projects, so these highly skilled individuals are lost, so it’s difficult to maintain employees.
Vanguard project phases?
Phase 1: Vanguard project
• Established at the front of the organisation to explore new technology, capabilities, routines or market opportunities
Phase 2: Project-to-project learning – how do you apply to other projects
• Capture and transfer the experience and insights from vanguard to subsequent projects e.g. ebi, www (keep journal)
e.g. Arup 20 core people in team, were split into different projects, went around giving presentations, these are what we did well, these are lessons learned that you can apply to this project to not repeat failures.
Phase 3: Project-to-organisation learning – how do you apply to an organisational level and organisation capabilities
• Consolidate initial learning and systematically spread accumulated knowledge across the organisation
• translate, test, practice learnings from previous projects to make it sound and reliable learnings.
• Verify them by applying them to different projects, hopefully improve capabilities of organisation and improve performance and move towards becoming a market leader.
Project Capability Building (PCB) model
Companies need to be good at exploiting things they good at and exploring things they aren’t yet good at. Over time hopefully becomes more organisational capabilities which means you become more exploitation than exploration. Exploitation much more functional.
T5 learnings planning phase
Planning phase
- Inside learning
• BAA’s Heathrow Express project (1994-1998). Inside learning from this, so used a differently contractual agreement and structure. - Outside learning
• BAA carried out case study research and site visits (2000-2002)
• Client always bears and pays for the risk
• Outside learning from this, they went back to other airport key learnings to make sure they didn’t make same mistakes.
