People aspects can be addressed by proactive organizational design and development, including culture, collaboration, relationships, and ultimately, effective project teams.
PRINCE2 includes a five-step organizational design and development technique shown below:
An alternative procedure can be used instead, for example, if the business has already developed a procedure specific to their organization.
The use of an alternative procedure should be documented as part of the tailoring decisions in the project initiation documentation.
Understand the organizational ecosystem
Projects unite people from organizations that already have defined organizational structures and corporate governance requirements.
An understanding of the organizational ecosystem is required to successfully design the project organization and determine how the project ecosystem will develop as a distinct entity from the organizational ecosystem.
As a temporary organization, the project approach needs to define how the project will interface and align with the organizational ecosystem where required.
There should be clarity on who retains responsibility for issues such as:
people management: for example, performance management, rewards, advancement, and wellbeing
governance: for example, which decisions are subject to corporate governance or governance pathways
management approaches: such as policies, procedures, and ways of working
how and when: the transition of project team members on and off the project.
Design the project ecosystem
Project organizational design describes how to organize work and people to achieve the project’s objectives. This includes:
- determining the effective structure of the team
- determining the people and resources needed
- implementing integrated working practices
- developing the project behaviours and culture.
The design occurs in response to the understanding of the needs of the project across each of its stages, the context it is working within, and the skills, capability, and capacity of the people required or assigned to the project.
Subject to the project’s scale, complexity, project approach, and delivery method, the organizational structure may need to transition at different stages of the project, such as moving from a client-led design team to a supplier-led delivery team.
Where possible, this should be identified and planned for during the initiation stage, establishing planned project management team structures at different stages.
Consideration is needed regarding the people and resources needed to support the transition between these different structures and the impact of the changes on the project team.
The project organizational design is informed by the work breakdown structure and the commercial management approach.
These will determine the number and size of teams, which organizations they come from, and the nature of any customer or supplier relationships required.
The capabilities required of a project delivered by people entirely from within the business will be quite different from those required of a project mostly delivered by external suppliers.
The project executive, supported by the project manager, is responsible for the project organizational design. It should be documented in the project initiation documentation.
Organizational design for projects requires expertise that is distinctly different from the business’ organizational design due to the temporary and ever-evolving nature of projects.
Subject to the scale and complexity of the project, the project executive may need to delegate this responsibility either within the organization, if they have this skillset, or to outsource the responsibility to a specialist supplier.
Develop the project ecosystem
Project organizational development concerns implementing the project organizational design and adapting and evolving it as the project progresses.
The project ecosystem will need ongoing development in response to changing project needs, team members, and their emerging relationships, ensuring the project is set up to deliver its objectives and to continuously improve.
The development activities may include:
- onboarding people to the project, for example, a site visit, induction, or certification skills and capability assessments or audits of the project team
- training for the project team, such as on new methods or to address skills and capability gaps
- team building
- establishing and maintaining a specific project culture
- succession planning including recognizing that people may leave the project before completion
- offboarding to capture lessons.
The change management approach to deliver new capabilities to the organizational ecosystem can also be used to deliver new capabilities to the project ecosystem, particularly, in the preparation of transition points, such as the appointment of a key supplier.
Just as there are key influencers in the organizational ecosystem, there will also be key influencers in the project ecosystem that the project manager will need to consult and influence for the project capabilities to be successfully developed.
The project executive is responsible for project organizational development and is supported by the project manager.
As with project organizational design, it is important to recognize that this requires people with specialist skills and resources with the appropriate capabilities.
Manage the ongoing changes to the project ecosystem
People require time to become familiar with the project and to gain the capability and develop the relationships to fulfil their roles.
It is critical to have clear feedback loops established to determine whether there are any capability or capacity gaps or relational issues to address.
The project manager is responsible for making the best use of the people and resources available, enhancing capabilities where required.
They do so by ensuring people’s responsibilities are matched to their capability and capacity, sourcing additional skills and capabilities, or upskilling people through coaching and learning opportunities.
The capabilities required on a project will change over the project lifecycle, requiring the project manager to ensure the commercial management approach supports this, transitioning people onto and off the project as required, and enhancing capacity and capabilities.
The project manager must also ensure that a robust change management procedure is established to ensure the impact on different areas of the project ecosystem are considered in decision-making.
One way this can be done is to identify the new capabilities that the products will provide and review any barriers to getting this new capability embedded into business-as-usual activities.
Clarifying these barriers early in the project lifecycle will highlight new project risks or issues and establish expectations on a realistic time frame for benefits realization.
A project stage is often defined by these transition points in the required capabilities.
This is a good point to review the project management team structure and the associated roles and responsibilities, ensuring that the commercial management approach supports the proposed changes.
Transition the project into the organizational ecosystem
As with the start of a project, at the close of a project, it is important to understand the organizational ecosystem that the products of the project and any remaining project team members will be transitioning into.
There are three key aspects the project board needs to consider as part of the transition:
products: ensuring all products have been accepted into the business and that any ongoing activities associated with the products such as further developments, monitoring the benefits, operating, and maintaining the products are owned by appropriate areas of the business
people: ensuring any remaining project team members are successfully transitioned back into the business or are managed in line with the commercial arrangements for external suppliers
learning: ensuring the most effective means for sharing lessons and using the knowledge gained, in undertaking project work, project team members may have acquired skills and capabilities that will likely benefit the wider business and organizations involved.
PRINCE2® 7 Foundation and Practitioner
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