Many organisations are struggling with a growing number of fully autonomous digital products, often each with their own Delivery centres, toolchains and ways of working, resulting in inefficiencies and products that do not work together.

The best way to combat this is to implement a matrix organisation that:

• Makes the best use of resources and knowledge leveraging all sites
• Provides high visibility and manageability of resources
• Supports employee development and global knowledge transfer
• Supports global resource planning

The objectives

The objectives are to:

• Deliver Productivity and Customer satisfaction through consistent understanding and leveraging of Best Practices (People, Processes, Tools) across all discipline and all sites
• Optimised profitability through the optimal use of resources and knowledge
• Revenue maximisation through cross selling of unified product offerings achieved by unification of their delivery models (unified knowledge and processes delivering interoperable offerings)

The actions

A Matrix Software Delivery Organisation both relies on and assists in building/maintaining a consistent and scalable agile delivery model across the organisation. This is important as a highly functional matrix organisation depend on:

• A consistent use of best practices and tools
• Efficient resource allocation
• Reliable and efficient onboarding
• Effective decision making processes

See my article on how to Manage distributed teams with a scalable agile delivery model.

With that in mind, the keys to__ implementing__ an effective Matrix Software Delivery Organisation model include:

• Individuals have multiple reporting lines, reporting to:
  • A local line management for career development
  • A global functional management team for the individual’s specific discipline (Project Management, Software Engineering, Test Engineering, DevOps, etc.)
  • A project for day-to-day management of project duties
• The global functional management team for each discipline consists of the senior line management for each location and is responsible for the development of Ways of Working for the discipline, including:
  • Service catalog
  • Career Path Framework
  • Onboarding and training materials
  • Roadmaps
• The allocation / availability of all resources (both internal and 3rd party) are visible to all in a shared Google Sheet. The allocation of each resource can only be updated by their local line manager.
• All resource requests and issues must be raised in Jira tickets (typically by Project Managers or Commercial Managers) and are reviewed on a daily basis by a Project Review Board in a Daily Project Review call.
• Resource requests are typically resolved by the relevant Project Managers / Line Managers. If there are conflicts that cannot be resolved by the Delivery teams, they are escalated to the relevant Commercial Management to make a ruling.
• Engage a Resource Administrator to manage the process on a daily basis.
• The Project Review Board is made up from representatives of the global management team for each discipline and the Resource Administrator, who is the owner of the Daily Project Review calls.
• The Daily Project Review calls are scheduled for 30min daily, though can be much faster.
• Attendance of Daily Project Review calls is not critical for anybody except the Resource Administrator, though anybody can join the calls. Typically if you have a request, you turn up to explain it. Also people can contribute via Skype message.

The implementation process

The key to implementing a matrix organisation is to unify the tools and processes used by the different groups. This provides a common understanding of what each group is doing, lowering the walls and allowing for corroboration.

As all organisational change can make people worry, impacting productivity whilst uncertainty reigns, senior management need to clearly communicate a clear end point, the transition process, and the ultimate benefits. This needs to be supported by frequent updates and the opportunity for questions to be asked-answered, typically by an approachable project manager who can help allay concerns.

HR needs to ensure that reporting lines are made very clear and that 1:1 meetings established as early as possible.

The purpose / processes of the various management teams needs to be documented and explained to those impacted.

Generally, it is paramount that individuals feel secure. Full understanding of the new organisational processes can be achieved over time.

Challenges

Challenges typically include:

• Effective communication of target states and change processes
• Making resources available to establish and maintain the matrix organisation
• Groups may resist new management structures and processes
• Individuals may experience feelings of disenfranchisement, disempowerment and fear

The results / outcomes

The outcomes you should target in implementing a matrixed organisation include:

• Increased ability to package and sell previously disparate offerings
• Better tools shared between previously disparate groups
• Improved access to more knowledge available across the organisation
• An expanded resource pool promoting greater responsiveness and better matching to requests
• Better decision making, particularly around competing priorities
• More opportunity for employees to move around the organisation
• More sophisticated solutions based on the packaging of more components
• More sales through more responsiveness and better solutions