Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
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Results<br />
stronger during the course of the program. It seemed that after the program<br />
had been divided into projects, the program had become more distant from<br />
the rest of the organization. The projects were considerably autonomous<br />
<strong>and</strong> there was little program-wide coordination that would link the<br />
program to the line organization’s management structure.<br />
Case Chain seemed to differ from the other two cases in some aspects<br />
related to the program boundaries. Firstly, concerning the task boundary,<br />
the program management approach did not cause much confusion. In<br />
Chain, temporary organizing was familiar to the personnel: there was a long<br />
tradition of internal projects, <strong>and</strong> there had been some attempts of smaller<br />
programs, even though these programs were described as somewhat<br />
unsuccessful. Overall, program work was viewed as similar to project work<br />
<strong>and</strong> the program as a way of organizing internal development <strong>activities</strong> was<br />
fairly well understood <strong>and</strong> accepted. Still, a few people compared the<br />
program to simpler <strong>and</strong> clearer projects <strong>and</strong> complained about the<br />
program’s lack of clear targets <strong>and</strong> a vision of the end state:<br />
Q14 (Chain, sub-program manager): “Somehow it still bothers me that I cannot<br />
see the overall picture ... We do not know the end result. And this in my opinion<br />
makes the program so challenging.”<br />
In Chain, the authority boundary between the program <strong>and</strong> the parent<br />
organization seemed weak. The program structure was designed in a way<br />
that linked the program closely to the line organization’s decision making<br />
processes <strong>and</strong> <strong>for</strong>ums. Many of the central managers of Domain’s (the main<br />
business division involved in the program) operations became heavily<br />
involved in the program based on their position in the line organization <strong>and</strong><br />
their management board role. They were appointed as the managers of the<br />
program’s development areas, <strong>and</strong> they together <strong>for</strong>med the program’s<br />
steering group. This provided a clear connection between the program <strong>and</strong><br />
Chain’s permanent <strong>activities</strong>. The following quote from a steering group<br />
member describes this connection:<br />
Q15 (Chain, steering group member): ”In my own [development area], I also<br />
genuinely have the business responsibility <strong>for</strong> this entity, so one could say that I<br />
have a deeper interest to take care of all these entities <strong>and</strong> to make sure that<br />
each reach their results.”<br />
Further related to the authority boundary, Chain’s program coordinator did<br />
not originally possess much <strong>for</strong>mal or in<strong>for</strong>mal authority, but he gradually<br />
gained more authority in the program as he demonstrated managerial<br />
capabilities <strong>and</strong> his knowledge on the program’s topic area accumulated.<br />
The gained authority was visualized in the change of his title from program<br />
coordinator to program manager. Also, the original program owner was<br />
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