2.1 The chapter suggests that a definition of strategic management includes four components:
a. Developing a strategic vision and sense of mission
b. Formulating, implementing, and evaluating
c. Making cross-functional decisions
d. Achieving objectives
Discuss how each of these four elements is important in understanding the challenge of strategic project management. How do projects serve to allow an organization to realize each of these four components of strategic management?
2.2 Discuss the difference between organizational objectives and strategies.
2.3 Your company is planning to construct a nuclear power plant in Oregon. Why is stakeholder analysis important as a precondition for the decision of whether or not to follow through with such a plan? Conduct a stakeholder analysis for a planned upgrade to a successful software product. Who are the key stakeholders?
2.4 Consider a medium-sized company that has decided to begin using project management in a wide variety of its operations. As part of its operational shift, it is going to adopt a project management office somewhere within the organization. Make an argument for the type of PMO it should adopt (weather station, control tower, or resource pool). What are some key decision criteria that will help it
determine which model makes the most sense.
2.5 What are some of the key organizational elements that can affect the development and maintenance of a supportive organizational culture? As a consultant, what advice would
you give to a functional organization that was seeking to move from an old, adversarial culture, where the various departments actively resisted helping one another, to one that encourages project thinking and cross-functional cooperation?
2.6 Compare and contrast the organizational cultures at Amazon and Google. Imagine if you were in charge of a project team at both companies. How might your approach to managing a project, developing your team, and coordinating with different functional departments differ at the two
firms?
2.7 You are a member of the senior management staff at XYZ Corporation. You have historically been using a functional structure setup with five departments: finance, human resources, marketing, production, and engineering.
a. Create a drawing of your simplified functional structure, identifying the five departments.
b. Assume you have decided to move to a project structure. What might be some of the environmental pressures that would contribute to your belief that it is necessary to alter the structure?
c. With the project structure, you have four ongoing projects: stereo equipment, instrumentation and
testing equipment, optical scanners, and defense communications. Draw the new structure that creates these four projects as part of the organizational chart.
2.8 Suppose you now want to convert the structure from that in Question 2.7 to a matrix structure, emphasizing dual commitments to function and project.
a. Re-create the structural design to show how the matrix would look.
b. What behavioral problems could you begin to anticipate through this design? That is, do you see
any potential points of friction in the dual hierarchy setup?
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