By Dick Billows Funny how organizations start off doing projects pretty well and then get progressively worse.
Organizations start off doing projects with a pretty high level of success.
Then things get worse as the number of projects in the organization and the proportion of people working on each project increase. When executive pain over repeated project failure becomes excruciating, the organization acts to accommodate cross-functional projects in the hierarchy. In the Alpha organization, projects are novel and sheer enthusiasm often overcomes woeful project management techniques and the total absence of an organizational protocol for project management. This combination keeps enthusiasm high and resource contention low. But this success soon moves the organization up to the Beta tier.