Every organization develops a unique culture and style that represents its cultural norm and affects how projects are performed. Culture is shaped by people's common experiences such as:
A project manager should understand that cultures have a strong influence on a project's ability to
meet its objectives. He or she also needs to know which individuals in the organization are the
decision makers or influencers and work with them to increase the probability of project success.
An organizational structure dictates how the various groups and individuals within the organization interrelate. The organizational structure also affects how much authority the project manager has, as well as the availability of resources and how projects are performed.
Main structural implementations: functional, matrix, projectized, or composite.
Relative authority refers to the project manager's authority relative to the functional manager’s authority over the project and the project team.
Project expediter: The project expediter acts primarily as a staff assistant and communications coordinator.
The expediter cannot personally make or enforce decisions.
Project coordinator: This position is similar to the project expediter, except the coordinator has some authority and power to make decisions, and reports to a higher-level manager.
Project management office (PMO) * is a management structure that standardizes the project-related governance processes and facilitates the sharing of resources, methodologies, tools, and techniques.
Organizational process assets (OPAs) * are plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases that are specific to and used by the performing organization.
OPA examples include:
Corporate Knowledge Base is a repository for storing and retrieving useful information, including:
Enterprise environmental factors (EEFs) * are the conditions, not under the immediate control of the team, that can influence, constrain, or direct the project, program, or portfolio.
These factors can either support or limit the project management options, act as inputs for planning processes, and have a negative or positive influence on a project outcome.
INTERNAL
Organizational culture, structure, and governance
Geographic distribution of facilities and resources
Infrastructure
Information technology software
Resource availability
Employee capability
EXTERNAL
Marketplace conditions
Social and cultural influences and issues
Legal restrictions
Commercial databases
Academic research
Government or industry standards
Financial considerations
Physical environmental elements
The culture of the organization has a direct influence on how the organization manages changes to a project. An organization that exists in a highly regulated environment will tend to have a formal and rigid culture, which will be reflected in how it deals with changes.
Once a change is approved and built, the project manager needs to plan for its successful implementation.
Roll out plans enable the project manager to define the knowledge transfer, training, and readiness activities required to implement the change.
Depending on the size and scope of the change, the affected parties may include:
Based on the scope of the change, the project management plan may need to undergo substantial updates.
Updates might include:
If the project is agile, impact may be limited to lower-value deliverables being
moved out of scope to make room for the change to be adopted.
Changes to the project plan likely will impact the training plan.
The changes may include:
Changes to the plan and deliverable set mean that there will be necessary changes to the training artifacts, which may include:
Changes to software solutions may require demonstration of the changed configurations, processes, workflows, and roles and responsibilities.
Demos should be reviewed by the key customer and user stakeholders for feedback to ensure the changes work as intended and do not otherwise impact the workflow of the solution.
Early feedback allows for adaptation while the feedback is still immediately relevant and should have the effect of improving the quality of the change while reducing overall cost and risk.