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Types of organisations

Organic

  • Small organisations or companies
  • Project Management is not necessarily a full-time function - someone from project team can take responsibility for managing the project
  • Some key PM responsibilities like Budget decisions etc. are out of PM's control

Functional

  • Team works in separate silos - each silo reporting to a Functional Manager
  • All the project work typically happens within a particular department - with department's manager (Functional manager) completely in charge of everything
  • PM has very less authority and works more of an expeditor to get things done on time
  • PM does mostly admin tasks
  • Functional manager has complete authority in this org type
    • Proejct team members report to a FM
    • Project management decisions are approved by the FM
    • PMs are assisstant to FMs in terms of getting the work done
    • No one person responsible for an entire project

Multi-division

  • Quite similar to functional org as far as PM role is concerned except that they do a bit of coordination as well like hosting meetings, communicating project status etc.
  • Each division may have a completely different way of managing projects
  • Each division may be seen as a different company when it comes to project management

Matrix

  • Many orgs fall in to this category
  • Functional and Project Managers share authority
  • Weak Matrix
    • Functional Manager has higher authority
    • Functional Managers are responsible for resource related decisions as well as approving all major project decisions
    • Project Manager is still a coordinator or expeditor in this org
  • Balanced Matrix
    • Project team members report to two bosses - PM and FM
    • Project Managers get people related decisions approved by the functional managers while functional managers also getting project decisions approved by the PM
  • Strong Matrix
    • Proejct Manager has a higher authority
    • Team still reports to two bosses - but since the delivery of the project is more important, PM has a say in people decisions as well as performance assessment

Project-oriented

  • Teams are organised around projects
  • After project completion, teams are released to be allocated to new projects
  • PM has the most power in this org - responsible for budgets, schedule, quality, resources and other areas

Composite

  • Blends the functional, matrix and projectised org structure
  • There can be a particular PM model selected on a project to project basis

Virtual

  • People from different geographies, time zones and even different companies (like external vendors) are part of the team
  • PMs often facilitate team communications and can have authority over buudgets, resource allocations and other areas

Hybrid

  • Aim of hybrid organisation can be two-fold -
    • Bringing in the best practices from different orgs structures in to one
    • Ensuring orgs can have adaptive life cycles as well as predictive life cycles based on the requirements
  • Role of PM varies depending on what kind of hybrid model is being adopted

Project Management Office

  • PMO has full authority over every project within an org
  • The way PMO functions is highly depended on how it is set up