Structuring chaos Passage from «Some Essays About Management»

essay

3

Earlier we’ve told about a project as a certain system we manage

That is why –the project is a whole set (hierarchy)

of all project participants and relations between them (structure)

Now we’d like to dwell at length on how project is born, how it’s stood out from its surrounding and

how it’s organized

Why is that important?

Because besides an objective of the project, there are many project participants and stakeholders

of different levels who are also to be worked with

Or there are many important and principal contractors and partners who influence considerably the project

success and effectiveness

Or

it may require gathering of a great number of bits of different knowledge domains

(planning, construction, supply, for example, etc.)

A really difficult thing in such projects is –to organize all participants and stakeholders

Lack of such organization hardly lets passing from project initiation to its planning,

needless to say that it also complicates moving to the project objective

Well, let’s get it one after another

1Project «birth»

What is the reason of project initiation?

Of course – project objective

It’s exactly the fact that there is an objective provokes the process

of reality structuring

The surrounding reality keeps on being the chaos –a super-intricate dynamic system, until project birth

And so, such chaos provokes a need in some result

And this need of surrounding world converts lastly into an objective [of the project]

In surrounding environment the defined objective provokes exigence to create a certain system,

a certain mechanism intended to reach the desired objective

Finally, thanks to all of that, separate persons

start to team upin a distinct and organized entity of people –

exactly to what we name a project

The objective is the very pivot which holds all participants in project borders and keeps stable

the project as a mechanism

The project objective is

a backbone factor which enables the «birth» of the project as a system

2Limiting chaos

Well, now we are in need of a working system

The first step in this direction is

to outline borders of the project, of all participants and stakeholders entity,

people whom we are going to manage

Why do we always underline people as project participants, and no companies?

It’s just because in our understanding we always work

with certain people only

Where a certain man works is not principal for us.

It’ important that he is taken within our project, it’s to him whom we’ll collaborate with,

but not always with his company

We outline on our own the borders of our project where we decide whether include or exclude somebody

We say these people are included in the project, and we’ll do manage them,

but those people are not

Why is that so important to manage project borders consciously?

‘Cause project borders represent the very filters which influence directly the thing of how

we visualize the project itself

Those are the very filters

we create artificially for ourselves and for all project participants

By means of borders and filters

we consciously enlarge or artificially reduce the number of people

we are going to manage

3About project structure and hierarchies

We’ve outlined project borders and now we face a super-complicated task –

to organize the project, i.e. people who develop and implement it

There are two ways of organization when creating a working mechanism –

structure and hierarchy

We need structuring all people taking part in the project by standing out diverse elements,

by connecting them and by bringing accurate and clear hierarchy in their relations

In result we reach two basic goals of management:

― by means of structure, we distribute all functions and tasks, which lead to the project objective, between all those who are responsible

― by means of hierarchy we get a mechanism of management and coordination of all participants within the project

What’s the use of structuring?

What are structures needed for?

It depends on that greatly –how our project and our system, as people entity, will move

The structure specifies behavior of all project stakeholders

Achievement of the project objective depends on whether it’s correct and adequate

Our task is to structure all participants in such a way that all functions and tasks would be distributed

and assigned to diverse elements

In the capacity of such elements we mean

people or groups of people, naturally

What is the logics of these elements standing out?

It’s very simple –if there is a function or a task, therefore, there must be a separate

specialized element for it

It’s important that such elements are

stood out artificially according to the project requirements

A typical mistake – if «natural» borders, for example, employees of the same department, are taken as a basis

The technology of these elements fixation in the project is mutual arrangements, which makes the ground to keep in the project all elements we need, such as technologies,

council of experts, logistics workgroup, etc.

These elements are bricks in the structure of our project, components of mechanism handling all necessary functions and moving us to the project objective

But these elements standing out doesn’t let us say:

«We’ve created the structure of our project»

We’ve prepared only building materials –bricks, which we’ll use

to build our structure

And now we need mortar to bring them together

How to establish relations between separate elements of our structure?

And what should these relations be like?

Relations. They bring mutual restraints on behavior of objects [project elements], which restrain behavior of

elements and make them depend one on another

New relations in our project let creating new opportunities and implementing some functions and tasks

which are unavailable to implement with separate project elements only

The basis for emergence of such relations, i. e. the technology of how to create them is –

concluding of mutual arrangements

between all stakeholders

…Mutual arrangements about subject of relations, about rights and duties

That’s arrangements exactly that represent

a framework holding the project, cement piecing broken

elements in a whole

How to shape arrangements?

First of all, it’s necessary to reveal interests of project participants and stakeholders

and to propose smth. to all of them within our project

These arrangements let to distribute rights and duties, to fix all functions and processes and to form project hierarchy

(to stand out levels of decision-making for the first)

Relying on these arrangements we create all relations we need between project elements

From the standpoint of relations shaping, it’s important

to have fixed (legitimate) arrangements

In result – our project (as entity of people and interrelations between them)

is organized

No arrangements –

no relations

We do have fixed arrangements –and the structure of the project does appear

Relying on these relations we form

communication channels

Channels which let through not only information in our project, but – what’s more interesting for us as managers – managerial influences

A little remark: legitimate arrangements equal relations,

when here these relations equal any number of communication channels,

formed on the basis of these relations (arrangements)

Why are relations so important?

They are important for management

They make our project manageable

Management

is based on communication

Transmission of any managerial influence is available when there is a communication channel –

direct or by mesne

That’s why we’d like to underline it once more :

arrangements and relations make the project framework, and communication channels specify organizational design where our project elements are ordered according to certain hierarchy as well as communication channels, designed for information transmission, including managerial influences, are adjusted

What principles does the project structure have to be based on?

a)

Maximal information flow – information exchange should be instant and have the least number of mediatory stages

b)

Minimal distortions of any information, especially – in case of managerial influences

c)

Rapid transmission of information which can be reached by large number of direct communication channels

d)

Centralization within the project when one of project elements (subject of management) has a maximal number of relations and communication channels for effective implementation of his managerial functions

e)

Flexibility within the project when there is a possibility to replace one element with another on a management or junction position

Everyone should define all by oneself what type of structure would be optimal and appropriate for him in his project

Anyway, the key instrument or technology of project organization is the

ability to provide arrangements

The ground for project organization technology is –providing the environment for arrangements making

(communication grounds) and managing the process

of arrangements making itself

At the expense of arrangements we can change borders of the project,

concentrate on elements we need, and come to mutual understanding

Thanks for Your attention!P.S. You got to know the passage of our book «Some Essays About Management»

The book is available in whole on the page «Vision» of our site www.kommandcore.com

Lively management of projects