Evolving Organisation in Large-Scale Multi- Project Environment

This paper studies the problems related to the organisation of a new large-scale project with ten years of duration and drawing key resources from the prevailing multi-project parent organisation. Special focus is on issues related to the management of the parent organisation and its evolution during the whole life cycle of the project. The problems and their tentative and normative solutions are described within the framework of CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, although the presented approach should be applicable to any organisation with similar characteristics. Traditionally, a project organisation is temporarily mantled to accomplish the defined objectives, not affecting the main functions of the parent organisation. Yet it is argued that also the parent organisation should be seen to be under continuous transformation processes. By studying the status of the on-going projects and the associated resources the parent organisation is encouraged to adapt a mode where rigid organisational positions are based on skills with evolving work content. The managerial principles of a process organisation must take into account the resources and their skills, along with their career development. The paper discusses also some of the technological necessities for a fluently evolving process organisation, namely efficient communication infrastructure and product data management. This is particularly important in managing sub-projects where the team members are dispersed all over the world. Such a situation is typical for the LHC-detector systems where thousands of physicists and engineers draw their resources together in a global world with coordinated effort. The main underlying message is that without well planning the evolution of both organisational structures, the future challenges set to an organisation like CERN could be in jeopardy.