Project management

Project management essay

​Structure or Chaos? The fine line on the road to success

Collapses in project management systems may be apparently explained by anything from a lack of project detail to managerial conflicts. Though many companies are characterized by one dominant type of management, they often will show a blend of types. Companies should be flexible enough to adopt the right management approaches at the right time to achieving long-time success. The challenge in managing of company is to obtain the balance between structure and chaos. Focusing on structure provides for company an order and a solid set of actions and circumstances that may be codified, communicated and monitored. Focusing on chaos/movement permits company adapting to unforeseen or disordered events. These project management phases require different management styles and project infrastructure. Projects in which difference and predicted uncertainty prevalent allow more structure management, whereas projects with high levels of unforeseen movement require a greater emphasis on chaos structure. Openness to chaos management is new to many companies. But it is obvious from the many magnificent project failures that the time has come to reassess some of the traditions in project management. In an era of fast change, movement is a rule, not an exception. Companies that comprehend that have the greatest chance to produce project successes.

Project management systems are considered dynamic systems, which means they transform over time and are difficult to predict, therefore achieving long success in company with structure management is hard. As company’s conditions are always changing, goals and purposes need to also be flexible to change. Goals and purposes are necessary; however, flexibility is a key in order to achieve a positive long-term result that is why only structure phase is not appropriate for company. The wish to escape inefficiency and to control uncertainty and risks reinforce pressure for higher levels of control and bureaucratize the project work.​Contradictory, structure management still has not separated from mainly companies. The majority of their tools and instruments are based on structure management such as hierarchy, division of job, linear cause-effect correlation and so on. The basic causes of weakness of structure management in achieving long-time success are:

But in another hand, why should company escape chaos in their projects? To answer this question, it is essential to define the concept of chaos. Chaos can be defined as a phase or state of the project where the future evolution of the system is not predictable, or only not clear predictable. Even greater flexibility is required in managing projects subject to movement. The management team members should work with speculative models that can redefined often as feedback stimulates chaos. Eventuality plans are insufficient because movement can cause a fundamental change in the company purpose, which in turn requires redefining the entire company. To provide the opportunities of long-time success high enough, team members should be willing to effort essentially various types of management, either in sequences or in parallel.

Thus, companies should find balance between structure and chaos phases of management; the project management opposite to various charges and requires management with various levels of elasticity. This paradox is mostly popular in big companies because these companies have projects as their main purpose and source of turnover. Therefore, big companies deal with the various types and intensities of complexity in activities, as well as amid various types of activities in the company’s portfolio, between activities and supporting functions, as well as amid subsidiaries, acquired and merged companies, and relevant project partners.

Attending the project life-cycle, companies face diverse types of challenges. In the first phase projects dispose to arise as chaos, as projects begin with an distinct plan, the project range is still not clearly described, project stakeholders are not sure of its practicability, the contract linking probable parties still does not exist, authority and obligations are not clearly described, the new members of the project are still getting to know each other and identifying the best form of interaction and so on. Thus, projects are still in phase of chaos, i.e. indeterminate or disordered. The following phase demands higher level of order and named structure. Procurement, production and meetings – include many company members; consequently the decentralization of authority and responsibility is necessary to embrace with the amount of work to do on time. The final phase well defined chaos and still with high level of flexibility for unpredictable problems that regularly arise in some cases.

Modern management and organizational models propose that successful companies are those able to combine and find balance between chaos innovation and structure efficiency, for example, companies able to deal with the coexistence of movement and order for better achievement long-time success.

References

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