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Jennifer DiTomasso Jacobsen

Question Four. Question: Why is it important to assess the culture of an organization before deciding what project management structure should be used to complete a project?Recall the analogy on page 80 of the Gray and Larson text. 1 The organization culture is like a river, and the project is like a boat. The current determines the ease with which the boat travels..

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Jennifer DiTomasso Jacobsen

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    1. Jennifer DiTomasso Jacobsen AD643 BG Homework one Question four from chapter three of the Gray and Larson text, Project Management, the Managerial Process

    2. Question Four Question: Why is it important to assess the culture of an organization before deciding what project management structure should be used to complete a project? Recall the analogy on page 80 of the Gray and Larson text. 1 The organization culture is like a river, and the project is like a boat. The current determines the ease with which the boat travels.

    3. Question Four The culture of an organization will affect how easy or difficult it is to accomplish project work. After assessing the culture of the parent organization, you will be able to evaluate which project structure would be most conducive to project success, within the culture of your organization. You must also balance needs of your project with needs of your parent organization.

    4. Question Four Use these ten cultural dimensions to assess how supportive your parent organization is of project management. The figure attempts to identify which cultural characteristics create an environment conducive to completing most complex projects involving people from different disciplines. (page 79)

    5. Question four Develop strategies, plans, and responses that will make your project management approach effective. (page 79) For example, if you know that the culture of the organization is not supportive of project management (it has a low team emphasis, people identify with their jobs rather than with the organization, and unit integration is independent, for example), you may choose to create a dedicated project team, in order to create a subculture that is more conducive to project success than the parent organization is.

    6. Question four Having a dedicated project team may not always be feasible, or it may not be in the best interests of your parent organization. If you find that the culture of the organization is conducive to project management, then you may decide that operating within the companys functional organization will lead to project success, and will be least disruptive for the parent organization.

    7. Question four For an example of a company that adopted a unique approach to ensuring teamwork in its management structure, please refer to the PM Networks article in its February 2005 issue, emPOWERed Teams by Bianca Wright. 2 Browse to www.pmi.org, click on Publications under Publications & Information Resources, then click on PM Network Online. If the article is no longer featured,search for emPOWERed Teams. The direct link: http://www.pmi.org/info/PIR_PMNetOnlineempower.pdf

    8. Question four They abandoned a hierarchical structure and did not designate a single project leader. Each of the five women on the project management team had an equal say in the cars creation in lieu of strict divisions of labor. (page 2, PM Network) Why was this structure and culture important to the success of their project? They wanted the team emphasis to be on the group, rather than on the individual. The culture of the project management team they chose was designed with the end product in mind. They found that women make up 54% of Volvo buyers in the United States, (page 2), and therefore chose an all-female core project team. They therefore chose to create a subculture within their traditionally hierarchical organization, comprised of women.

    9. Question four Why else was it important? This egalitarian structure gave team members more leeway to balance family and work. Out of the 120 people working on the project, we had 17 babies.none of the YCC team members had worked on a concept car before, and while the team operated within an established time frame and budget, there were no predetermined, upper-management dictated specifications. This autonomy allowed the team to focus strictly on the end user and complete the project faster and at less cost than other Volvo concept cars. (page 2)

    10. Question four As project managers, we would need to plan for the human side of projects as much as for the tasks involved. The culture of the organization will affect how well or how poorly the organization structure supports projects. Assessing the culture of the organization before deciding what organization structure would be most effective would enable us to create an environment most conducive to project success.

    11. Endnote Gray, Clifford F., Larson, Erik W., 2003. Project Management, The Managerial Process, Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Online. emPOWERed Teams, Creative Teamwork Initiatives Guarantee Project Success in the High-Pressure Automotive Industry. http://www.pmi.org/prod/groups/public/documents/info/pir_pmnetonlineempower.pdf. PM Network, www.pmi.org. Retreived 2/28/2005.

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