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In the 1960s and earlier, frequently big corporations were logically arranged into silos, in which divisions of employees reported to a line or functional manager. The attempt to restructure the organization to develop workable project management teams is referred to as a matrix organization. For example, look closely at an IT company. Software programmers can be found in the development silo, in individual groups of customer service representatives, and in the finance department. Each of these different departments has a need for the skills of experienced programmers at one time or another. In the 1970s, companies started to improve organizational operations, resulting in the development of an organizational structure to become known as "Matrix". Consider the information technology company discussed earlier. Note that all computer programmers are organized together into a single department and are supervised by a single manager. In this way, the manager supervises all the programming functions in an organization functioning as a single point of contact. In this type of organizational hierarchy, line managers are called functional managers because they supervise individuals who perform the same functions. This is a great example of a matrix organization. In this kind of organization, workers are categorized according to their skill sets and grouped in silos. This can be compared to the columnar organization of a matrix. A dedicated manager heads each silo and the workers in his group report to him and are answerable to him. The responsibilities of this manager include promoting his or her workers, departmental budgeting, and administrative oversight of the silo. So far, the only difference between a traditional business organization and that of a matrix is the classification of employees by job duties. However, an additional dissimilarity is that matrix organizations also have rows that cut across the various columns of traditional organizational charts. Traditional organizations may have worked sufficiently, but they were very inefficient. Within the company many people would have the same skills. Project management situations revealed their greatest weakness, however. Instead of working directly for the project manager each team member worked under a different supervisor, in a different functional area. This was clearly the road to confusion and, ultimately, failure. Consider, then, a matrix with several columns of workers who perform similar functions and are each supervised by a functional manager. Think of rows stretching across the column, with each row supervised by a project manager (this person can be visualized as being at the far left side of the page and leading a single row). Each row, then, intersects each column of workers. This allows each row to manifest as a group of workers that function differently and are led by one project manager. With this type of structure, there is bound to be a great deal of tension created between functional managers and project managers. Because they share the same workers but have different jobs to do the stage is set for a conflict of interests. Several different categories of matrix organizations exist. In each, the goal is to create a balance of power between each manager's particular functional needs. Steve Wilheir is a management and marketing consultant with Envision Consulting in Tampa, Florida. Get more information on matrix structure at project-management-course.info. Choose the right Project Management Software and optimize your Gantt Charts
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