Putting It All Together

Multi-team projects are a phenomenon of the twenty-first century. As project management processes and practices become more pervasive in the enterprise, the likelihood of multi-team projects increases. Depending on their project management maturity levels, business units may have developed their own project management processes. When these come together in multi-team projects, management difficulties often arise. This chapter discussed those situations.

The literature is void of any suggestions as to how to manage these types of projects. With the exception of the three models discussed in this chapter, you will find very little else to help. The three models that I presented here are models that I have personally seen in use or recommended to my clients.

In this chapter, I discussed the following four factors that affect your choice of a best-fit project structure:

• Project management maturity — Either a PO or CT structure is recommended for organizations at Level 1 and 2 maturity, where business units have developed and firmly established their own project management methodologies. Organizations at Level 3 through 5 can use any structure with good results. These will comprise teams whose differences between methodologies will be minimal.
• Complexity and uncertainty — As complexity and uncertainty increase, the best-fit structure changes from PO to CT and finally to ST.
• Total team size — As team size increases, the best-fit structure changes from CT to ST to PO.
• Criticality — As criticality increases, the best-fit structure changes from PO to ST to CT.

Some combination of these four factors will be present on every project, and they are not independent factors. So the choice of best-fit structure may still be a subjective decision. For example, say an organization at Level 2 maturity has a highly complex and uncertain project with a small team, and the project's success is very critical to the enterprise. Based on the preceding list, this combination of factors suggests that either an ST or a CT structure should be used. The final choice will be subjective, but it should be based on additional information about the organization, its culture, client profile, and staff skills. If the client has a history of being meaningfully involved in projects, then an ST organizational structure would be a good choice. As another example, if the teams have well-developed tools, templates, and processes in place and make a strong case for using them, then a CT structure might be a better choice.