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 />
central line managers in program steering. The next quote characterizes the<br />
importance of this arrangement.<br />
Q76 (Chain, sub-program manager): “Another [central enabler] is that the<br />
business management has committed to be active in the steering group. Even<br />
though the connection to the business is not always that tight, <strong>and</strong> they might<br />
not have deep knowledge about the details that sometimes pop up in the<br />
steering group’s decision agenda, they are still actively involved.”<br />
To give another example of how Chain’s program utilized the authority of<br />
the line organization, a sub-program manager in Chain explained how the<br />
program had gained a more powerful status when the chairman of the<br />
steering group (i.e. the program owner) changed:<br />
Q77 (Chain, sub-program manager): “When [N.N.] started as the leader of the<br />
program, its status clearly increased, since [N.N.] has the <strong>for</strong>mal title of [highranking<br />
title in Chain], which is higher in the hierarchy than what the original<br />
chairman of the steering group had.”<br />
From the three cases it seemed that Center’s program was not able to gain<br />
the required authority. When the position of the program was discussed<br />
among Center’s top managers, there seemed to be visible fears that the<br />
program would alter the power relations within the organization. A<br />
frustrated key program actor described the situation in the following way:<br />
Q78 (Center, program coordinator): “The program has not been provided a<br />
strong authority to make decisions, <strong>for</strong> example. The management group of<br />
[Center] has retained that authority. … The discussions with the management<br />
group made it clear that this program, if I may exaggerate a bit, actually isn’t<br />
allowed to change things that much. … The [management group’s] meeting<br />
minutes actually state that “the program is a means to support projects <strong>and</strong><br />
<strong>activities</strong> that aim at the same direction, in a way that increases effectiveness<br />
<strong>and</strong> synergy, but does not change the existing authority structure”.”<br />
The analysis indicated that guarding <strong>activities</strong> also supported the<br />
programs’ autonomy. Such guarding <strong>activities</strong> focused on making conscious<br />
choices of not utilizing the organization’s normal procedures in the<br />
program if they were seen to endanger the program’s capacity to produce<br />
change in an efficient way. To give an example, there was an organizationwide<br />
procedure in Bureau <strong>for</strong> auditing projects, but the change program’s<br />
projects bypassed the procedure.<br />
Q79 (Bureau, project participant): “There is this [project audit procedure] that<br />
should in principle be applied to all IT programs, projects <strong>and</strong> systems … But<br />
this is like the shoemaker’s son going barefoot: projects in [the program] have<br />
not followed this policy.”<br />
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