The Influence of Organisational Systems on your Project

An organizational system is something that encompasses the whole organisation and involves things like the culture, the governance frameworks in place and the management elements that are already in place.

There are a few things that influence the organisational structure of a company.

The first is governance frameworks.

With governance frameworks we ask, what are the rules that we have in place? We might have rules, policies, procedures, norms, even just cultural norms that are accepted within an organization. Existing relationships can also be very important, for example Billy might have an existing relationship with Anne and he can say: “Hey Anne could you just do this for me – I know it usually takes four weeks, but maybe you could do it for me this time?” And that will happen if they have a really great existing relationship within the organization.

You might have existing processes in place which apply for projects, programs and portfolios, where lots of projects will make up one program, and then multiple programs will make up one portfolio.

Management has a very specific role in organizational systems – it is how it works on a daily basis with responsibilities, discipline of action, how much action actually gets done and what happens if it’s not done, unity of direction and unity of command. Ensuring there is one clear strategic direction. Or perhaps everyone’s just sort of going for their own little team and trying to make that work – each company will be different and you may need to adjust. Safety of the people, ensuring optimal morale, ensuring clear security of work positions – all of these things are part of the management when we’re managing in within an organizational system.

The Project Manager’s Sphere of Influence

Within a company itself there are certain influences on these organizational structures and systems. It starts at the bottom where the influence of the project manager is very low. If we’ve got a project that’s just organic, where has been kicked off between a bunch of people and it’s not really formal – maybe we’re just trying to make an improvement in some way – then usually the influence of the project manager will be quite low.

But it goes up as we go into these different structures, and a functional system is where we have a functional manager who is leading a project and trying to do something, usually within their own department. They’re actually the one in charge. If a project manager comes on board usually they will report to that functional manager, within that particular team.

The influence of the project manager goes up as we move through virtual teams, hybrid teams, Weak, Balanced and Strong matricies. If you’ve got a weak matrix you’ve still got low influence, balanced is where you’ve got a balanced influence usually between the business and the project manager or the project management office, and then the strong matrix is where you have a lot more control and as a project manager you have more directive control over the resources, over the cost, over the scheduling, and all of that is more up to you as opposed to being up to the functional or the BAU environment.

Lastly the Project Management Office is where all of the projects are collected within a PMO and they are brought down the lines specifically within their own governance structures, where everyone has to go through the PMO to get anything done, and they have the most influence in a PMO structure.

– David McLachlan

Project Management Office Types

The PMO or the project management office itself is quite important and there are a few different types of PMO that you will come across in your career and in the CAPM and PMP exams.

Supportive PMO

A supportive PMO is more of a consultative role. They will supply templates, best practices, and they don’t really have a high degree of control they just give people guidelines in what to do and say.

For example, “Here’s a good way to do it, but what you do is up to you.” They’re just supporting you. They’re not really directing or controlling anything.

Controlling PMO’s give more of a specific project management framework or methodology, such as the use of specific templates, forms and tools. They also ensure you use them, so they’re saying “Here are the things that you have to use, and this is the way you have to do your project.” It’s controlling the project, but through the use of templates forms and tools that the company uses. A controlling PMO asks for conformance to those governance frameworks. They might have project specific methodologies and specific ways of work.

Lastly the most controlling is the Directive PMO, which is what I personally found a little bit confusing. But directive project management offices take complete control of their projects by directly managing those projects. They have specific project managers, assigned by the PMO, and they report back to the PMO. They have a very very high degree of control in this environment.

So you have supportive, controlling (where we control through templates, governance frameworks and adhering to these) and then directive (where we’re actually taking the direction of the project through the project management office

The primary function of a PMO, no matter what type it is, is to support those project managers in a variety of ways. These ways could include managing shared resources across all projects and this is really important. You might have 10 projects but you only have enough resources for six projects, so you need to shift these around and the PMO can keep an eye on all of this. A PMO will usually have a portfolio view of things and help manage the use of those resources across those different projects.

They can help with coaching, mentoring, training and oversight, monitoring the compliance requirements and the standards and policies and procedures, helping people work with the policies and procedures within an organization, and coordinating communications across projects.

It really does come back down to that project, program and portfolio view where they have a great view of all the things that are going on. In the individual projects they can help with the communication, help with the management of it, and basically are there to support those project managers and help get the job done. And these are the Project Management Office Types.

– David McLachlan

Project Management Data, Information and Reports

Within your project there are three types of data that you’ll come across.

The first is the most raw type of data, things such as raw observations during activities performed to carry out the work. For example, how many times did you do “X”? It’s also called work performance data and you’ll come across this in your CAPM and PMP exam. There’s data, there’s information, and then there’s reports. Each of these feed into each other so it’s quite important to take note of.

Work Performance Data

Data is the raw stuff, raw observations such as a count of “this many actions” or “this many dollars”. Project Management Data is often captured in your Project Management Information System, which is the overall process and software you use to capture and hold project information. Examples include:

1. Work physically completed
2. Quality and technical performance measures
3. Start and finish dates of schedule activities
4. Number of change requests submitted, or approved
5. Number of defects
6. Actual costs or money spent
7. Actual durations of activity

Work Performance Information

We analyze the work performance data to turn it into work performance information, analysing against other information it to give a status, such as estimates to complete on the project. This is where we turn it into things like variances, percentages or charts and information that people can use more readily than just the raw numbers. It’s things such as the cost performance index (which you’ll come across) or the schedule performance index which we’ll need to calculate to see how a project is going.

It also includes things such as:
1. Status of deliverables
2. Implementation status for change requests
3. Forecast estimates to complete

Work Performance Reports

This is where we put all of of that information into a nice pretty document, usually that someone can read quite easily and we turn that into our work performance report. Another way to look at this is we’re executing the processes and physically doing them that’s the work performance data. As we’re controlling those processes we need to analyze them and see how they’re going maybe they’re 80% complete for example that’s our work performance information. Then when we’re wanting to report on our overall project and control that within the business and maybe report up to our executives, managers, sponsors or the stakeholders who are involved then we’re wanting to do a work performance report so they can see how it’s tracking as well.

This really feeds into our project change control and our project communications that help us to show how everything is going.

– David McLachlan