A Contingency Approach to Designing Project Organizations: Theory and Tools

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Engineering Project Organization Journal

ISSN

2157-3727

Volume

2

DOI

10.1080/21573727.2011.641118

First Page

5

Last Page

14

Publication Date

1-24-2012

Abstract

Many firms have increasingly come to rely on projects as a fundamental approach to organizing work. Yet understanding the best way to organize projects is a challenge, given the various contingencies that impact project success. We focus here on three contingency-based project organization design tools (the design structure matrix, OrgCon™ and SimVision™) that help to manage project complexity and ensure project success by identifying misfits or misalignments between organizational elements. We discuss the application of these models to a large National Aeronautics and Space Administration project as an example. We conclude with a consideration of how the existing tools are useful, and where they fall short.

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