Situation
Our client was a division with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, a ministry that works towards establishing a patient-focused, results-driven, integrated and sustainable publicly funded health system. The Ministry had embraced a new direction in terms of building a sustainable public health care system.
As part of the massive multi-billion-dollar eHealth project, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care had created a team to work together on implementing a new IT system designed to provide public health professionals with the integrated tools needed to assist in monitoring, managing, and reporting in the area of public health. The overall project team consisted of approximately 50 staff, with another 26 scheduled to be brought on. However, the team had run into some organizational issues.
Some of the issues related to the current organization including:
- How the team had been managed in the past;
- Alignment of the organizational structure around core project processes
- Staffing and deployment of the current project management leadership into existing roles / structures
- The level of team work among the project management leadership
Requirement
The project required an organizational review on the structure of the project leadership team and assistance in restructuring the project management leadership to:
- Begin the process of addressing some of the above issues
- Provide a structure against which the existing and proposed new project resources could be aligned
The objectives also included addressing and defining the following:
- Flattening of the project management leadership structure
- Appropriate role redefinition of the Technical and Business Lead positions into direct project management roles
- Appropriate role redefinition of other direct project management positions as required
- Possible realignment of reporting to e-Health.
Challenges
The main challenges we faced on this project included:
- A high level of competition and mistrust among project team members
- A culture rift between internal public sector employees and external hired consultants and project managers
Actions
After considering the key objectives of the project, our expert advisors:
- Considered two of the change levers for creating a winning team: leadership and organizational structure and design.
- Explored key organizational questions with project stakeholders using a workshop to determine the criteria for the development of a project leadership structure.
- Conducted an alternatives analysis based on the developed criteria around the overall project organization, identifying the strengths and weakness of each.
- Identified key role elements including: role, responsibility, authority, accountability, and reporting.
- Successfully developed a blended version of a project leadership structure with key position descriptions identified.
Results
At the conclusion of the project all the key success factors had been achieved, and the client was highly satisfied with the project deliverables and the value added by Schroeder & Schroeder Inc.:
- There was clarity for the team in terms of role responsibilities, accountability for deliverables, accountability for stakeholder relationships, and day-to-day direction for each project member
- The new structure was flatter, thereby increasing the degree of collaboration among team members
- The recommendations allowed for an evolving organizational readiness to deploy a major public health solution, including anticipated requirements related to development and transitioning to ongoing operations