Beijing Eaps Consulting

Beijing Case

Question 1:

Since 2006,Beijing EAPS consulting uses Matrix organization as its organizational structure for project work.

Pros:

• Time saving: employees in functional department could spend more time on their specialized fields and grow more familiar with certain work procedures instead of discussing contract content.

• Resources shared: Because both project manager and functional manager involved, there is good visibility into who is working there, and resources can be shared between project and department approriately. This reduces possible duplication.

• Better coorperation: project managers and other department managers would work out a plan for each project and then co-conduct the plan. Therefore, decisions tend to be higher quality and are better accepted.

• Development continued& Effective integration on project : Since employees still report to their functional manager, they are able to develop and retain discipline-specific knowledge. In addition, various disciplines report to the same project manager, effective integration is still possible. Lessons learned can be share effectively between project.

• Flexibility:

Cons:

• Two "bosses": In this case, project and funcational manager share authority equally.As a result, employees always confused about prioritizing the tasks when there was conflict between two managers' assignments. " who had power to make a final decision when there is disagreement?"

• More meeting: Employees not only face various project but also meet the day-to-day requirments of their own deparments. Workloads become very heavy for employees.

• PM has challenges to control the project: Sometimes, project manager did assign the tasks to the employees who were already working on tasks assigned by their functional manager and found it hard to