Managing complex programs represents a challenge requiring skills in team building, leadership, conflict resolution, technical expertise, planning, organization, entrepreneurship, administration, management support, and the allocation of resources. This section examines these skills relative to program management effectiveness. A key factor to good program performance is the program manager’s ability to integrate personnel from many disciplines into an effective work team.
Integration Management
Project integration management is the coordination of all elements of a project. This includes coordinating tasks, resources, stakeholders, and any other project elements, in addition to managing conflicts between different aspects of a project, making trade-offs between competing requests, and evaluating resources.
SELECTING THE PROJECT MANAGER:
AN EXECUTIVE DECISION
Probably the most difficult decision facing upper-level management is the selection of project managers. Some managers work best on long-duration projects where decisionmaking can be slow.
THE STAFFING ENVIRONMENT
To understand the problems that occur during staffing, we must first investigate the characteristics of project management, including the project environment, the project management process, and the project manager.
Organizing and Staffing the
Project Office and Team
Successful project management, regardless of the organizational structure, is only as good as the individuals and leaders who are managing the key functions.
Case Study – JONES AND SHEPHARD ACCOUNTANTS, INC.
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.
TRANSITIONAL MANAGEMENT
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.
STRATEGIC BUSINESS UNIT (SBU) PROJECT 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
STRUCTURING THE SMALL COMPANY
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.
SELECTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL FORM
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
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.