INTEGRATED EXAMPLE PROJECTS SUBURBAN HOMES CONSTRUCTION PROJECT Suburban Homes,
ID: 385957 • Letter: I
Question
INTEGRATED EXAMPLE PROJECTS
SUBURBAN HOMES CONSTRUCTION PROJECT
Suburban Homes, once a medium-sized company, is rapidly expanding its business to southern states and is focused on maintaining its status as the fastest-growing construction company in the Midwest region of the United States. Its significant growth and good reputation for building quality single-family homes and townhomes presents both challenges and opportunities.
Suburban Homes is considering various options to expand its operations while retaining its focus on managing resources effectively and efficiently to increase profits:
Given the nature of its projects, Suburban Homes is considering either a projectized or matrix organization structure. However, a functional organization structure has not been ruled out.
With its focus on maintaining high quality in its construction tasks and end-product (home for the customer) as well as quality assurance in implementing project management processes, the company is actively considering a combination of the DMAIC model with a traditional project life-cycle approach. Organization culture plays an important role in sustaining and promoting efficiency. The culture, in turn, is influenced by the organization structure. Suburban Homes is highly committed to employee development and functional expertise through training, mentoring, and collaborative learning.
Which type of organization structure is more suitable as Suburban Homes opens new offices in other states? What is your advice to the company to address all these issues comprehensively and coherently?
INTEGRATED EXAMPLE PROJECTS
SUBURBAN HOMES CONSTRUCTION PROJECT
Suburban Homes, a medium-sized, fast-growing construction company, has an ambitious plan to expand its business to several southern states in the United States as a result of its significant growth and good reputation for building quality single-family homes and townhomes.
As a project manager, Adam Smith worked for several years in the construction industry and supplemented his experience with project management education. From his initial realization that managing projects successfully requires implementation of various project management processes, tools, and techniques, Adam recognized the importance of building project teams composed of well-trained staff. From his experience managing a few projects in the Midwest and based on the lessons learned from these projects, it was evident to Adam that Suburban Homes did not place a strong emphasis on people-related factors and team development. Adam recognized the scope for improvement in managing and developing high-performance teams and decided to act on this knowledge immediately.
Adam s primary task was to improve the performance of project management and increase the project success rate, so he wanted to address project team selection and the team development processes. Further, he realized that employee turnover and the expansion of the business in southern states led Suburban Homes to recruit more employees. Many of these new recruits have prior experience in the construction industry. In addition, the workforce now represents different work cultures, attitudes, commitment, and work ethics.
Adam recognized the immediate need to manage human resources effectively and efficiently. He decided to formalize project team selection, development, and management so that all the locations in the Midwest and South will have similar team management philosophy and practices. To achieve these purposes, Adam has considered the following:
1. Train project managers as leaders. Also, project managers must be trained to identify talent, select project team members, and nurture their growth.
2. Develop a team charter so that all the team members are aware of performance expectations, professional behavior, and other team norms. The charter should also help in training newly recruited employees to improve productivity, collaboration, coordination, communications, and conflict resolution.
3. Develop a conflict management plan and prepare guide-lines for all employees to identify and manage conflicts.
4. Design and implement a decision-making protocol for all the projects and in all locations.
5. Develop norms for high-performing teams.
You are hired as a consultant to develop the above five deliverables.
Explanation / Answer
The matrix organisation is the best organisational structure to address the needs of the business and grab the upcoming opportunities at present and be in a better condition to take on future challenges.
This type of structure will be a combination of functional and projectized structures, that will make the orgnisation ready to work in a dynamic environment and ready to adapt to the changes in more agile manner to meet the ever changing needs of the business by imroving efficiency, readiness and flexibility. On the other hand, functional nature will enble the teams to benefit from the subject matter expertise of field experts and provide a unified approach of managing the teams spread across different locations, still carrying the same values and cultural attributes within them, that is central to the organisation.
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