Question

what's project organization structure and why is it important

Answer 1

*Project Organization Structure:

A project organization is a structure that facilitates the coordination and implementation of project activities. Its main reason is to create an environment that fosters interactions among the team members with a minimum amount of disruptions, overlaps and conflict. One of the important decisions of project management is the form of organizational structure that will be used for the project. Each project has its unique characteristics and the design of an organizational structure should consider the organizational environment, the project characteristics in which it will operate, and the level of authority the project manager is given. A project structure can take on various forms with each form having its own advantages and disadvantages.
One of the main objectives of the structure is to reduce uncertainty and confusion that typically occurs at the project initiation phase. The structure defines the relationships among members of the project management and the relationships with the external environment. The structure defines the authority by means of a graphical illustration
called an organization chart.
A properly designed project organization chart is essential to project success. An organization chart shows where each person is placed in the project structure. An organization chart is drawn in pyramid form where individuals located closer to the top of the pyramid have more authority and responsibility than members located toward the bottom. It is the relative locations of the individuals on the organization chart that specifies the working relationships, and the lines connecting the boxes designate formal supervision and lines of communication between the individuals.

Creating the project structure is only a part of organizing the project; it is the actual implementation and application that takes the most effort. The project organization chart establishes the formal relationships among project manager, the project team members, the development organization, the project, beneficiaries and other project stakeholders. This organization must facilitate an effective interaction and integration among all the major project participants and achieve open and effective communication among them.
The project manager must create a project structure that will meet the various project needs at different phases of the project. The structure cannot be designed too rigid or too lose, since the project organization's purpose is to facilitate the interaction of people to
achieve the project ultimate goals within the specified constraints of scope, schedule, budget and quality. The objective in designing a project structure is to provide a formal environment that the project manager can use to influence team members to do their best in completing their assignment and duties. The structure needs to be designed to help develop collaboration among individual team members; all in a cost effective way with a minimum of duplication of effort and overlaps.
The organization chart has a limited functionality; it only shows the hierarchical relationship among the team members but does not shows how the project organization will work, it is for that reason that the design should consider factors that will facilitate the operation of the structure; these include communications, information flows, coordination and collaboration among its members.

Factors in Designing a Project Structure:

There are two design factors that significantly influence the process of developing a project management structure. These are the level of specialization, and the need for coordination. The project manager should consider these factors at the moment of designing the project organization in order to maximize the effectiveness of the structure.
Specialization affects the project structure by the degree of specialty in technical areas or development focus; projects can be highly specialized and focus on a specific area of development, or have different broad specializations in many areas of development. For large projects that have multiple specializations or technical areas, each area may have a different need; from differences in goals, approaches and methodologies, all of which influence the way the project will implement its activities. A project that has two components, a reconstruction and education, will need to manage different approaches based on the specialization of each one. In the education component, the needs is for a structure more open and informal, where the time horizon is longer, with more emphasis on sharing and generation of new ideas in order to achieve innovation and creativity.
In a reconstruction component, there are specific goals, a need for a rigid, hierarchical structure, and there is a defined time horizon with little sharing of ideas. While specialization allows each project component to maximize their productivity to attain their departmental goals, the dissimilarities may lead to conflict among the members or
leads of each component. In general, the greater the differences, the more problems project managers have in getting them to work together.
Coordination is required to bring unity to the various elements that make up a project. The project work is organized around a work breakdown structure (WBS) that divides the overall project goals into specific activities or tasks for each project area or component; the project manager must design an organizational structure that ensure that the various components are integrated so that their efforts contribute to the overall project goal. Integration is the degree of collaboration and mutual understanding required among the various project components to achieve project goals. Most projects are characterized by the division of labor and task interdependencies, creating the need for integration to meet project objectives. This need is greatest when there are many project components that have different specializations. The goal of the project management structure is the achievement of harmony of individual efforts toward the accomplishment of the group goals. The project manager's principal responsibility is to develop integrating strategies to ensure that a particular component or activity is organized in a way that all of the components, parts, subsystems, and organizational units fit together as a functioning, integrated whole according to the project master plan.

*Importance of project organization structure: