Bureaucratic Approach To Project Management

3.2. Structural problems that include:

3.2.1. Project reporting line

The project was no longer reporting to the project management office but instead was now reporting directly to the operations manager.

3.2.2. The bureaucratic approach to project management

Where the project manager was not given the necessary authority over the project or its resources, including functional resources, and where the functional managers simply charged direct labour time for other projects to this project.

3.2.3. The organisational structure was outdated and bureaucratic

Whilst the project sought a matrix or cross functional structure through actions and performances of teams by the coordination of portfolio, programme, project and process managers who maintain

Ignoring the need for a structural strategy

The organisation ignored the need for a structural strategy in the implementation of the project whilst also lacking strong executive leadership. Harvey and Brown (2001) purport that organisational transformation and innovative change should be inclusive of a three-pronged effort that addresses the creation of improved attitudes, building new relationships in a revised organisational architecture, and creating improved internal organisational processes, products and services. To succeed with strategic transformation and change, all three of the above approaches must be strongly supported by leadership, in particular executive leadership.

3.2.8. Failure to gauge the organisations experience curve, current HR architecture and level of OD skills

The project manager was inexperienced to manage a project of this size resulting in a poor diagnosis of the organisation’s current state and culture, insufficient information about employee strengths and weaknesses, a glaring lack of OD skills, and poor organisation structure. Furthermore, the computer system failed as a performance management system.

3.2.9. The organisation permitted obstacles to block the project including the organisation

Lacking key performance indicators – Balanced Scorecard

There were no key performance indicators (KPI) on the project linking it to the organisational performance, i.e. no measurement according to specific KPI’s, neither was a balance scorecard implemented.

3.3.3. There was a lack of change management processes and practices within the project

There were two main aspects that displayed complete lack of project change control and include the computer system implementation, which was later abandoned, and the customer’s representative’s request for project changes which both had a cost and time impact on the project. With no formal process in place to address change requests the project incurred additional costs as well as time delays.

3.3.4. Inexperienced project manager

The organisation assigned an assistant project manager the elevated role of project manager and furthermore it replaced the project manager without validating their capability, skill, and experience. There is a lack of a learning and growth strategy to address leadership excellence, training, employee development, relationships with suppliers and customers, information technology application and other factors bearing on