Traditional organization structures were built around ongoing and permanent tasks: the "marketing" department was staffed by individuals who perform marketing functions that are done as a matter of course. And in such a department there is likely a person whose task it is to manage the weekly newspaper advertisement, which is a task they perform each week on an ongoing basis, in the same way they have always done it. This work is performed over and over and is never expected to end: that is, the company will always place a newspaper ad each week and the clerk will always need to attend to the necessary tasks to do so.
Such an organization gravitates toward stasis and myopia: for the sake of efficiency and reliability, nothing is ever expected to change. People settle into jobs in which they become very efficient, but it becomes the scope of their existence: it is "my job" to do this task, and they lose sight of its context and meaning within the bigger picture. This is particularly true among the people who perform hands-on tasks, but also is evident in the attitudes of those who manage them.
Project-oriented teams within an organization depart from this: their work is to implement a solution to a problem for which there is no defined and existing pattern of behavior. In many instances, they explore the problem and define a solution before implementing it. Such teams in traditional organizations are ad-hoc - they effect a change on the rest of the organization and disband once that change has been made.
There have also been entire companies that are project-oriented, but this has traditionally been rare. A construction company, for example, would assemble the personnel required to build something and manage the construction project. When the building was completed, the company would move on to another project. Its people needed to be flexible because no two days involve the exact same tasks, and the skills needed might change from one project to the next (building an office building or building a bridge require different skills).
Design consultancies operate in the same manner: each job they do for clients is a project that has a specific beginning and ending with work that tends to vary (that is, unless they are doing the weekly newspaper ad or some other repetitive job for a standing client) such that the agency must define the work to be done and then perform it. In such an agency, an employee's responsibilities vary, and their work is better defined by the projects they are supporting than a job title or role.
Management in these organizations often consists of "putting our fires" - which is to be expected. In a workplace where every project is unique, there are no regular duties. The workers are specialists who do not merely perform tasks, but define the tasks to be done, and they are capable of doing this without much assistance - but when problems arise, management must step in to smooth out obstacles that to keep the work on track. The problems will be as unique as the work.
The project-based model emphasizes collaboration - authority over a task is maintained by the person who performs the task. There is usually a project manager who attempts to keep track of the work and overcome impediments, but because there is no formal process that drives the work of the team, there is not a management function to ensure people are doing what they are supposed to be doing - because there are no suppositions.
Project teams generally proceed through a number of phases in which the nature of the work fluctuates. The problem-solving phase defines the criteria by which a solution will be assessed to be a success or failure. The design phase hypothesizes a solution that is compared to the problem until consensus is reached that it is worth pursuing. The development phase implements the solution that has been agreed upon. After that is complete, the project is over, though it may result in follow-on work to provide continued support for the solution.
Thus considered, traditional firms are in the "continued support" phase most of the time - and this has been the historical approach to doing business, which can be maintained in a relatively unchanging environment, such that the same operations can be counted on to produce the same results consistently. But in the present day, the environment constantly shifts, such that the problem-solving work cannot be a periodic task, but an ongoing necessity to remain functional and relevant.
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