The project organization
in the network-centric logic
Passage from «Some Essays About Management»
essay
5

What if we’ll try to organize the project
in the networked logic?

Then all informational, communicational and eventual flows
are to be ordered in the appropriate networked logic
of functioning and interaction

This order can be provided at the expense
of the organization of the project
in the networked logic

…When everybody communicates
one with another

…When all joint efforts
are concentrated in one

When everybody moves
by the «Rules of play»
shared by and divided for all

Let’s try to define in what way the project is organized
in the network-centric logic

What is the project like in its early beginning –
on the phase of initiation?

We consider that it can be described
by three levels where all real
and potential participants
of the project are included

Level 1.
The first level includes companies, managing
the complex project, and the project
key participants – a customer, an initiator,
a project sponsor and an investor

Level 2.
The second one describing physical performance
of the project includes companies taking part
directly in execution of separate stages
of the whole work

Level 3.
The third level includes stakeholders who don’t
usually take active part in the project moving,
but are able to influence the project, its separate
participants or interconnections between them

Project realization covers the chain of participants
from the first and the second levels where they
are frequently «black boxes» for us

Unsealing of such «black boxes» is provided by certain resources,
and at last we are to get certain result which is important
for the project development

Concerning stakeholders, that’s much more interest arising –
they can influence any «black box» as it is,
and any connection between them

And that’s – only the
beginning of the project
It’s really very complicated to convert it
into the network-centric organization
in the literal sense of the word
without some kind of even nearly referencing algorithm

So, what will
we begin with?

For the first step,
let’s invent the networked mechanism to manage
our project – create the team for project management
consisting of coordinators
by separate managerial functions,
branches and stages of the work

Then, secondly –
let’s unseal the «black boxes» of a customer,
an investor, a sponsor of the project etc.,
bring it to the notice of a defined amount
of specialists and managers with all their
interconnections, responsibility zones,
and interests in the project

The most effective tool for that is
face-to-face meeting
held with each separate «black box»

In result, we’ll define collective and individual objectives
of participation in the project as well as the set of independent knots
and their actors, realize the needs of all actors,
keep all data about their privileges and opportunities,
and get the list of as more contacts as possible

The third step
lets us unseal each of participants who
performs the project directly, using the same tools
and the same objectives like on the second step

When moving the first and the second steps, it’s
important to remember that it’s not necessary to tell
participants that we create in such a way the networked
structure, just to organize all interconnections in this logic

After all these three steps have been completed,
we get access to all
uncovered elements
inside the former «black boxes»

And now all our nearest surrounding by the project represents
for us the platform with accessible elements, situated not under,
being ordered in the strong hierarchical logic, but all around us

The forth step –
is initiation of the strategy of interaction with
stakeholders’ «black boxes»

What differs stakeholders from the other project participants?
It easily may turn out that they don’t strive
for the project final objective achievement or even hamper that.
Being unsealed, they may get more reasons
and tools for counteraction

What to do?
But just to refuse to split evidently dangerous,
potentially dangerous and neutral stakeholders up
and take them in future as an indivisible knot
with a defined actor

After the forth step is finished, we get the principal ground
for the following construction of the project networked
architecture – on that surface we can observe the amount
of real participants and stakeholders with all their
internal knots and actors

The fifth step –
elaboration, arrangement, fixation and acceptance
about the «Rules of play» by participants

It’s very important that creation of «Rules of play» of full
value is the result of great number of negotiations
and arrangements by project which serve to initiate
the principles of interaction, mutual constraints,
other standards, which can be useful for us
in project networked architecture forming

As interim result – the tool, accepted and used
by all participants for horizontal
communication initiation
In every single moment any participant
of the project knows what rules
the project communication
is based on

On the sixth step
we increase intensity of
horizontal communication
between all participants
of the project that provides
information flow as wide
as possible
This process is permanent
and iterative

What is the most necessary for that?
1. Analyze the accumulated information about
structures of companies-participants and stakeholders
2. Find out the maximal amount of original
communication flows necessary
for the project
3. Arrange horizontal communication links where
they are absent

As interim result –
the communication ground for the project
is created
This ground is one of the most important
for the project networked organization,
because it is to be turned into the foundation
for the project networked architecture

The seventh step –
functional knots creation
They enable some separate managerial functions,
like quality, risk, supply management or separate
tasks and branches inside the project

The tool for functional knots creating
is the functional knot architect who is regarded
in the project managing team as a coordinator
of all managerial functions and branches

The result attained –
in our surface of natural knots, located
and connected one with another,
including numerous objects related diversely
with other objects, there is the new
artificial element – functional knots

Functional knots, coupled with communication channels,
are unlikely to be kept on or presented on this surface –
when they are created, the project
starts uncovering
and adopts more and more information

We reached the point when our principal surface turned into
the voluminous system
and it remains only to complete the project up to the end
via strengthening this system by means
of the appropriate environment

The eighth step –
network coordination mechanisms initiation

Tools for the coordination mechanism
initiation are:
— coordination councils
— integration councils
— other forms of project participants’
personal meetings

Since that moment the project starts
functioning in the networked logic
By that, the coordination mechanism initiates
and, at the same time, maintains the required environment
for the project

The ninth step –
to provide the network-centric organization
with backbone technical infrastructure –
an IT-platform – which would resolve the problem
of project management process simplification,
as if in the networked organization

Such infrastructure is an indispensable part of the
coordination mechanism of the network-centric organization
and, besides that, the future
environment
for project participants interaction

The tenth step –
to embed the tools for development of
the network-centric organization participants
in all working operations

Such tools may include:
— organizational business games
— training by accompanying actions
— meetings of different level with public results
— master classes
— seminars
—…

And what’s finally?

Let’s try to evaluate together the given result

What happened with our project after we’d begun to change
and organize it in the network-centric logic?

We’ve imparted to daily phenomena, relations and expressions
new sense and filling

There is no change in the project objective,
the project itself and its participants, the
reality remains the same
– but what has changed is our attitude

We get able to see
or, at least, to treat these relations
and interactions of people in this new networked logic

Actually we’ve been portraying
and creating the network-centric organization
in our mind

Having opportunity, we’ve got the ability
to arrange relations, to communicate, to move,
as if we were surrounded by a certain network

By such approach we are able to increase
manageability and to do a project more effective,
more predictable, and prepare very powerful pretext
for the future – it means, to get a proto-network
in fact, which can be successfully used
for private profit after the project completion

Thanks for your attention!
P.S. You got to know the passage of our book «Some Essays About Management»
The book is available in whole on the page «Vision» of our site www.kommandcore.com

Lively management of projects