Ideas on changing a Weak Matrix Organization to a Projectized

With all due respect I don't believe you hired 'the best project managers in the market" as the best would have to have a basic knowledge of your business. The project managers didn't fail, the strategy that hired them failed.

Many if not most PMs are primarily subject matter experts in project management, having limited business experience in the domain they work. Some say that PMs could in principle easily change the domain in which they are working with not much problems since the project management activities are the same in all the domains. I personally met a construction PM who has moved to IT/Telecom projects.

If a PM was successful in a matrix organization that was because most project related decisions where not taken by them but by the functional managers. In this environment the PM works more as a facilitator for all the project stakeholders.

I have never seen a projectized organization in action but I assume that since there are no functional managers the PM has to make all the decisions and in addition he must also have more advanced business knowledge in the domain that he is working in.

Maybe hiring the best project managers the market has to offer to work in projectized organization is not the best solution if those PMs previously worked in matrix organizations where they did not have a lot of authority.

Maybe for projectized organizations you don't need professional project managers but experienced business/technical people with managerial experience who are assigned as PMs.

The most obvious companies suitable for projectized organizations are professional services companies - architectural, engineering, construction management, software developers (other than in-house). Some government departments or crown corporations may also see an advantage as well.

You may also see hybrid organizations where a company could have parallel structures, functional and project, possibly each reporting to a VP - this would include large companies with continual project activities as well as production mandates. Including petrochemical, oil and gas, power generation, mining, etc.

With a company primarily focused on production with occasional projects, setting up a project organization would most likely not be effective. I would think naming a functional leader as project sponsor with either internal staffer or hired gun as project manager would suite.

Hi Peter,

I think when you have permanent employees the projectized organization is almost never suitable even if most of the activities are performed as projects.

From my experience the closest you can get to a projectized organization is when an organization needs a large project but it does not have the competence to deliver it to itself. In these cases a special structure is created within the organization to deliver the project and most team members, many times even the PMs, are some sort of contingent workers such as contractors, consultants, temporary employees.

A typical scenario I know is when a non-IT company needs a major IT project/program to implement a major system. The company may have dedicated IT technical works and IT Project Managers but they are not suitable for such a project. In this case a special temporary structure is created which would be formed mostly of contingent workers that would stay with the company until the project is finished. Many times a Program or Project Director would be appointed which may also be a contingent worker. The structure is usually supervised by a permanent employee that servers as some sort of Major Projects Director/Executive.

Permanent employees of Software Services Companies and other companies would work in a matrix structure reporting to a functional manager and working with multiple PMs. I know a lot of permanent employees working exclusively on projects but still they are part of functional or matrix structures and they don't report to PMs.