Organizational Structures Commonly Used to Develop a Project
Organizational structures in a business enterprise environment express managerial, administrative and operational relationship within the entity. These structures influence the enterprise ability to coordinate its activities, promote communication and counter the changes in the environment. The most common organizational structures used to implement projects in business enterprise environment are the functional organizational structure and team organizational structure.
In the functional organization structure, the project managers are responsible for managerial and supervisory activities in the enterprise. The members in the business enterprise environment perform a specific set of tasks. Therefore, the operational efficiency in the business enterprise is first-rate. The team must be equipped with technical skills, knowledge and understanding of the overall project in the business enterprise. The structure ensures Team members are accountable to the functional department that lends them the project. Mostly this structure is best suited in producing of standardized goods and services in large quantities but at a lower cost. The project manager reports to the steering committee, which is on the same level as project director. This steering committee supports the project manager and is under the highest decision making body. However, there is lack communication between the functional teams because each team is specialized in a certain task (Ireland & Cleland, 2006, p.194).
The team organization structure has managerial and supervisory responsibilities assigned to individual team members. These team members have to function as self-directed teams. Team structure constitutes a set of people who are exceptionally competent to achieving new scope. The quality of the structure rotates around the competencies of teams in totality. This means the team members are highly skilled, and the set up of one quality structure helps the low-skilled team members to turn to the same structure. This structure is flexible, especially amongst the teams. The teams can be both vertical and horizontal. The project management team is the SWAT team, and project office does not administer only but also provides shared service. Project directors within the business enterprise however, coordinate with teams for efficient communication. This makes the structure be suitable for larger bureaucratic organizations (Cobb, 2006, p.8).
References
Cobb, A. (2006). Leading Project Teams: An Introduction to the Basics of Project Management
and Project Team Leadership. New York, NY: SAGE
Ireland, L. & Cleland D. (2006). Project Management: Strategic Design and Implementation.
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional
