HAROLD KERZNER, Ph.D., prominent instructor for the International Institute of Learning (IIL), is currently Professor of Systems Management at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio and President of Project Management Associates, a consulting and training firm that conducts seminars for leading U.S. and international corporations. He is the recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Illinois and has taught engineering at that institution and business administration at Utah State University, where he received the 1998 Distinguished Service Award. The Northeast Ohio Chapter of the Project Management Institute has honored Dr. Kerzner by instituting the Kerzner Award for Project Management Excellence.
By 1970, Jones and Shephard Accountants, Inc. (J&S) was ranked eighteenth in size by the American Association of Accountants. In order to compete with the larger firms, J&S formed an Information Services Division designed primarily for studies and analyses.
Why have some companies been able to implement this change in a short period of time while other companies require years? The answer is that successful implementation requires good transitional management.
During the past ten years, large companies have restructured into strategic business units (SBUs). An SBU is a grouping of functional units that have the responsibility for profit (or loss) of part of the organization’s core businesses
Small and medium companies generally prefer to have the project manager report fairly high up in the chain of command, even though the project manager may be working on a relatively low-priority project.
Project management has matured as an outgrowth of the need to develop and produce complex and/or large projects in the shortest possible time, within anticipated cost, with required reliability and performance, and (when applicable) to realize a profit.
Matrix layering can be defined as the creation of one matrix within a second matrix. For example, a company can have a total company matrix, and each division or department (i.e., project engineering) can have its own internalized matrix. In the situation of a matrix within a matrix, all matrices are formal operations.
In project-driven companies, the creation of a project management division is readily accepted as a necessity to conduct business.
The matrix can take many forms, but there are basically three common varieties. Each type represents a different degree of authority attributed to the program manager and indirectly identifies the relative size of the matrix structures company.
The matrix organizational form is an attempt to combine the advantages of the pure functional structure and the product organizational structure.
The pure product organization, develops as a division within a division. As long as there exists a continuous flow of projects