The Huntsville Plant Project Organizational Structure

Running Head: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

The Huntsville Plant Project Organizational Structure

Keller Graduate School of Management

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

The Huntsville Plant Project Organizational Structure

Seitz Corporation has allocated funding for a structured project team to develop a plastics plant in Huntsville, Alabama. The board of directors has employed their ideal matrix style-organizational structure in order to create a distributing plant in a relatively short time frame. Although there could possibly be dilemmas and shortcomings of this type of leadership, the benefits could save the team and the project as it comes across risks and other events that could halt progress entirely.

As it appears, the Board of Directors has chosen to run with a combination of functional and projectized leadership. Taking the benefits of these two styles, they have developed a matrix style structure that envelopes the sole leadership of a project manager, and a multifaceted group of functional experts that are specialists in their related job tasks. There are some indications that the project team is not utilized anywhere else other than the project; in addition, most of the team members are likely to be continuous employees of the company and not contracted out for project purposes only. This matrix style organization combines the expertise of several key authorities in their respected professions, and the project leadership of an overseeing manager to coordinate events, time and costs.

Employing a matrix style structure will benefit Seitz Corporation in several ways. Most importantly, it allows team members to share information more readily across tasks and coordinate them accordingly. Additionally, it allows for specializations that can increase the knowledge pool and allow professionals to progress in their own career development. This structure will benefit the company because an overseeing manager will be responsible for

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

coordinating progress and reporting to the board, while the skill related professionals can work continuously and cohesively towards workload completion.

In any project, there are associated risks that should be addressed and understood by stakeholders and the project team. Although there are many positives with the matrix style, there must be key precautionary measures and rules to follow. Communication problems are associated with this type of organizational structure due to having too many experts in similar fields and collaboration shortfalls. The Project manager should follow the

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