By their very nature, project teams aren’t permanent.

But it’s still important to have a clear team structure and hierarchy. Particularly in larger teams, not knowing who reports to whom can cause confusion and frustrating delays.

The problem, however, is that our usual org charts are designed to be permanent. Whilst they may be modified as people move, or when the organisation is restructured, for the most part the overall structure doesn’t change much.

Here’s how to create practical project team org charts using orginio or Planning@Work.

Export a spreadsheet of all the project employees from your HRIS

As this is a temporary org structure, you may not want to work from you core HR source of truth.

Instead, take a snapshot of the employee data you require, and export it to a CSV spreadsheet. Photo files can generally stay in the same place, so long as you keep employee ID numbers the same.

Drag and drop your new reporting structure

Using modeller, it’s very easy to drag the reporting structure exactly how you want it.

Once you’re done, you can save the changes, meaning next time you want to modify or view the chart you’ll just need to open up your org chart platform again and it will still be there.

Provide access to the charts or export to PDF

The final step is communicating the reporting structure to the team.

The best way is to give them direct access to your org charting tool so they can see all the changes in real time as you make them. It’s very easy to restrict access to sensitive information (for example, hiding personal addresses or home phone numbers from the charts) based on the user.

If you really can’t manage this (talk to Navigo Support first if this is the case!), the other option is to export the chart as a PDF to print or share. Bear in mind that you will need to redistribute the chart each time you make any changes.

That’s it!

As you can see, you really don’t need to start creating project team org charts from scratch. If you’ve got an org charting tool and accurate data, the process is not really that much different than creating a standard chart.

If you’d like help or advice creating your org charts (or purchasing an org charting tool), chat to our team on +61 3 9879 4060 or info@navigo.com.au