Project management requires a great deal of planning, collaboration, and focus. How a project team decides to structure their approach to a new project can be the difference between project success and failure. Making sure team members know what their roles entail, who has the final decision-making power, and what they can expect from other project team members is important for any project to succeed.
Leaders and project managers now enjoy a wide range of options for tackling complex projects. These options include making use of dynamic, remote, and hybrid teams. However, to figure out which type of team might work best, project managers need to be strategic in their project organization.
This article serves as a guide to the essential elements of effective project organization, including several specific aspects to consider.
What is project organization?
Project organization refers to how a project’s tasks and timeline are laid out. It requires a project manager to coordinate the activities and contributions of team members across departments. This guarantees the business best utilizes team members’ skills, doesn’t waste time, and produces deliverables.
Good project organization relies on a shared agreement about how decisions are made, how work gets done (and in what order), and who is in charge at various stages of development. While the project manager typically heads resources throughout a project’s life cycle, different departments may take charge of specific tasks at certain times.
3 types of organizational structures
There are two major elements affecting successful project planning that project managers need to consider at the outset of new projects: the process of the project’s path to completion and the structure of the team that will execute that process. So much of digital staffing is about how these two elements relate. Having a clear list of duties with an equally clear timeline established at the beginning of a project can prevent problems later on.
Choosing a structure that best facilitates both timely, short-term deliverables and long-range project goals allows project managers to determine the best placement of team members upfront. Implementing one of the following three organizational structures provides flexibility as to how a project comes together:
- Project organizational structure: With this type of project structure, project managers function as line managers across a team that have been assessed and placed according to individual strengths, not necessarily previously dedicated roles. Team members focus solely on the project, reporting directly to the project manager and sharing their experiences with other team members.
- Functional organizational structure: For small projects or small teams, a functional structure is often preferred because this framework allows the project manager and all available team members to work in the same department or functional area. An example of a functional setup would be handing a project over to your public relations (PR) or marketing division so all the experts you need are in one place.
- Matrix organizational structure: If your workers need to split their efforts between regular tasks and the project at hand, a matrix organizational structure may be the right fit. This project management plan sees leadership responsibility divided between functional management and the project manager. The matrix approach typically requires a fair bit of negotiation in its processes, as the team’s efforts are spread across your company’s normal workload and the new project at hand.
For reliable insights on how best to guide dynamic remote and hybrid teams through any organizational setup, project management decision-makers can check out Upwork’s guide to leadership.
6 things to consider with project organization
Project organization is all about thinking ahead. Team leaders committed to making a project work need to consider several things when organizing their team’s approach. The following six considerations can help lend project success to any organizational setup.
1. Clear project requirements
Whether it’s the creation of a shared organizational chart or a simple Zoom meeting outlining detailed roles for both full-time and part-time workers, setting forth clear project requirements early is essential to project success. One of the biggest challenges facing any agile workforce is getting everyone on the same page about where a project is going, how it needs to get there, and who’s responsible for what.
Having a teamwide agreement on overall project goals allows team members to recognize the functional manager for the project. This also permits workers to learn escalation routes for any given task and avoid duplicated or inefficient deliverables.
2. Alignment among stakeholders
Every part of the project needs to be important to all stakeholders. This means that investors, team members, and managers need to communicate well and frequently.
One way project managers can accomplish this is to assign tasks that are attached to larger organizational goals. For instance, if your ad agency is taking on a big project for a new high-profile client, make sure that everyone, from your copywriter to your web designer, understands their importance by sending assignments with notes attached about what that particular assignment means to the bigger picture.
Connecting your team to the overall impact of the tasks they complete each day not only gives them a sense of purpose but also fosters a greater feeling of community.
3. Resources available and needed
Outlining what you have and what you need is a crucial step in any successful project management structure. Everything from budgeting to skills gaps needs to be thoroughly evaluated as early as possible so tasks and timelines don’t bottleneck.
Checking out the tools and templates offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI) can help project managers keep needs assessments in order.
4. Communication planning
No matter what type of organizational structure you choose as a project manager, making communication a top priority from the beginning will save you worlds of stress.
Different types of projects may call for more or fewer daily interactions among team members. Deciding on a system for each functional department to share progress, updates, strategies, and problems is a vital step toward project success. This piece of your project planning could be as simple as setting up a project-oriented Slack channel, to as in-depth as requiring weekly teamwide meetings dedicated to more specific interactions between groups.
Always look for ways to boost collaboration when choosing a communication method and make sure that both full-time and part-time workers are kept in close contact for the duration of the project for maximum benefit.
5. Review and feedback process
Workflow on any project is hindered when team members don’t hear what’s going well and what needs improvement. Project managers need a strong system of quick, constructive feedback that incorporates all functional departments.
Review and feedback could be designed as an automatic feature of your team’s shared communication plan or could take place on a more individual level via progress-monitoring Kanban boards that team leaders send out privately to each team member every week. Remember that the main focus of review and feedback is to avoid problems repeating and focus on providing solutions and never empty criticism.
6. What could go wrong and possible corrections
Evaluating project processes for potential pitfalls at the start can save your team from panic and confusion later. This part of purposeful project management is not fortune-telling but merely foresight. Taking the time to think about where problems might arise within your project management plan, which team members might encounter challenges where, and how to navigate it all allows you to think more calmly about solutions before you need them.
Having the right skills for the workforce today means being malleable to change and adept at maneuvering team members through unexpected moments.
Organize your project around the right talent
A powerful project management plan should serve as the roadmap for your team to complete project goals. A little planning goes a long way toward preventing headaches surrounding deadlines, deliverables, and decision-making.
