• Implement the organization structures.
• Monitor the effectiveness of the named roles.
• When necessary, amend the organization.

45min.

A5.KCI-4. Implement and maintain the temporary organization

1. A plan is more than a good intention. You describe the temporary organization in the project/programme plan. But in itself a plan is passive, and needs to be approved and implemented. When the plan has been approved by the major parties involved (in any case the sponsor and the major resource suppliers), you have to ensure that everyone is informed.
   It is not sufficient to send the plan as an appendix to an email message. Active communication is necessary. We often see this happening during the kick-off, in news bulletins and in one-to-one conversations.

2. In a good organization, there is a continuous flow of information which exchanges the different elements with each other. The planned infrastructure and associated processes together form the Project/programme/portfolio Management Information System (PMIS). The specialists are responsible for the various products, services and results, and the project or programme manager is responsible for the implementation of the information system.

3. If this is problematic, or fails, it is almost always due to the system, and not to unwilling staff. Opposition may have to do with not being able to instead of not wanting to. The basic principle for the documentation of data is that it assists the team members with the execution of their activities. If this is the case, you gain support for the system. If that is not the case, the implementation will not succeed, and it is then tempting to force staff to report on a form that does not reflect reality, resulting in the wrong data being filled in.

4. We often see an obsessive utilization of micro management, whereby the project management team concentrates more on data than on information. Success is dependent on the system being thought through in advance, also taking into account the workability, and the courage to change when something does not work.

5. When we talk of information control, we mean:

• Gathering together the data.

• Molding the data into information.

• Distributing the information.
  This happens at every management level, which means that what is information for an underlying level is data for the higher level. Each level processes this data into information for the next level. If the person you report to is not interested in what you provide, it is a signal that something is wrong with the molding of the data.
  Controlling is, therefore: 

  • Ensuring that the team members formulate the information in their report in such a way that this contains useful information.

  • Processing their reports into your progress report in such a way that you make this suitable for the management level above you.
     

6. Next to actively communicating, there is also the matter of supervising the organization, which means ensuring that everything is going to plan and, where needed, making corrections and anticipating unexpected problems, risks and changes.

7. It is at the interfaces where things go wrong. From the start, therefore, you must consider what the dependencies of the teams on each other are. As well as the technical interfaces there are also the organizational interfaces, each of which forms a risk that we have to address. A quick look at the organization chart is often sufficient to see what can go wrong. The interface problem can be solved by giving the teams a "collect" and "deliver" duty.

8. When a particular team (engineering) has to deliver a sub-deliverable, which another team (construction) is waiting for, then the first team (engineering) has a duty to deliver meaning that the leader of the sub-project must state when he expects to deliver. The duty to collect is with the receiving team (construction), who must not passively wait until something is "thrown over the wall", but raise the alarm when the delivery is not on time.

9. No project/programme organization is set in stone; when necessary, you adapt (in consultation with the other parties involved) the organization. Continuous improvements are necessary to achieve an efficient execution.

Application

You can convert the above into actions on the project/programme for which you are currently responsible, by carrying out the following steps:

• Implement the organization structures.

• Monitor the effectiveness of the named roles. 

• When necessary, amend the organization.