When managing projects within functionally-structured organizations it can often feel like a daily challenge to engage people managers effectively such that staff allocations are predictable. - Functional managers challenging or questioning project roles, responsibilities or activities for team members
- Availability or allocation of team members changing frequently with little or no warning from the team members or from their direct managers
- Team member substitutions with the project manager being the last to know
- Project managers getting admonished for following up directly with team members on work status or progress
- Absence or minimal participation from team members in project status meetings
You may have done a good job of explaining how the project’s success will benefit the functional managers & their teams, so it can be extremely frustrating when even basic cooperation is lacking.
A fundamental difference exists in how projects are perceived between functional organizations and balanced or strong matrix ones. While we might consider projects to be the medium through which positive change occurs, in functional organizations, they represent a costly diversion for staff. As the percentage of effort spent by a team on operational work nears 100%, the greater can be the challenge in engaging staff on project work.
This issue cannot be resolved by a single project manager or even by a PMO – the change needs to come from the functional teams themselves. The first step is acknowledgement – if you can help the management team recognize that project work will not diminish over time and that they should consider implementing approaches to reduce impacts to operational responsibilities, that’s half the battle won.
An approach to consider is rotational segregation of staff within existing teams. Depending on the volume of project work and the available capacity, one or more staff can be requested to focus on project work for a fixed period of time and once their project “tour of duty” is over, they will be rotated back to daily operational work. This avoids the divisiveness of permanently splitting a team, and increases the likelihood of knowledge transfer between team members.
Project managers might find people manager behavior perplexing in functional organizations, but this is another good scenario to apply Covey’s Fifth Habit “Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood”.
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Comments
The key project management issue is resource balancing. Resources are often up to or over 100% utilized on their operational work. Given that so many organizartions have very lean staffing, it is a challenge to free up functional staff for project work. Often the resource(s) required for project invo9lvemnent are the most valued in the functional area.
Senior level managers must be engaged to enable functional managers to fill any gaps left by assignments to project work. Project managers must consider the impact of part time resources, whose functional commitments is always going to be a higher priority than their project commitments.
The big challenge in many cases is getting functional managers to ask for assistance through back-fill measures or other means - too often they have been conditioned to assume they can't get additional help and just end up taking on work that their teams can't accomplish.
From the operations perspective this actually makes some sense, because it means that person can make a fresh start on their return without someone else having to interrupt their on-going work.
The big challenge is for the project manager to have the strength to get that all sorted out before agreeing to undertake the project in the first place.
You are correct that this is not an issue specific to technology projects and that it is extremely common - my concern is that too many organizations take band-aid approaches to address it as opposed to coming up with a more holistic & permanent approach.
A good working relationship with peers might help to overcome this problem. Again it depends on maturity and attitude displayed..
If the situation is "in-house" then the culture has to be changed by the chief executive - perhaps changing the CEO.
If, however, it is between parties joined by contract, then we have to blame the attitude of confrontation typically embedded in our legal contracts. And that needs educating lawyers.
Another factor is the tendency for operations managers to believe that the project people should take care of projects and deliver reults that are sluipped into operations, seamlessly. Everyone must be educated regarding the reality of complex projects.
Generally, conflict only arises when people are squeezed by conflicting demands or expectations. As a PM it is one's responsibility to clearly lay out the trade-offs and to not commit to projects that lack sufficient reources. It is wise to team with one's operational managers to change the system.
while I agree that the CEO plays a significant and indispensable role, I find that often the parade is started by a champion who convinces the CEO that supporting PM is as critical as supporting current operations.
Quite true. A good CEO is supposed to listen carefully to the members of his/her team. But in the final analysis, it is up to the CEO to make choices (there will be others on the team to advocate the opposite view), give direction and set the tone.
Kiron