The matrix revolutions

Wonder whether this ever happened to you ?

We're a bit overorganized around here. We have a 3-dimensional matrix management structure, in which each staff member potentially reports to the well-known line management dimension, project management dimension and additionally to what is being called "functional management". It actually means you report to someone who defines standards and practices for your "function", in my case as enterprise architect.

Today I have actually become the project manager of my own functional manager, and also of his functional manager. That kind of proves my first point about being overorganized. This is due to a chain of 3 organizational decisions: the first was a decision by the architecture board that an architecture task, on which my functional manager and his functional manager were both working, is to be completed by a certain business programme, the second a decision of the programme management to delegate the task to the IT project in the programme, the third a decision of the IT project management to delegate to the enterprise architect on the project, which is me. That closed the loop.

I'm still considering whether I will cut my functional managers' project budget tomorrow or just make them work overtime :-) .