Matrix organizations sound ideal on paper — shared knowledge and better resource utilization — but in practice, engineers end up with two bosses competing over priorities. When both the functional head and the project manager have authority, confusion can slow development or even derail projects.
What’s the best way to avoid this “two-boss problem” while keeping the collaboration benefits of a matrix structure?
I think the easiest way to avoid this scenario in this instance having "two bosses" as you put it is to essentially have each boss fill a particular role without stepping on the others feet. For example, I have two managers at my summer job that both fill administrative roles, however their responsibilities and domains of authority are different as to avoid any possible competition or confusion. I think this is applicable to the project manager and functional head roles under the matrix organization. Very simply, the project managers focus can be on the scope of the project and the timeline/deliverables where as the functional managers role should focus on methods, tools, and standards of the projects. In this way the managers can be perform there required duties separate without impeding the others process. This structures also allows for positive collaboration efforts to occur and allows for both groups to benefit from the shared resources. In terms of conflict resolution over engineers time, concerns should be communicated between the functional manager and the project manager and can be ranked based on the priority of a task and the importance of that task being completed. If this does not solve the issue than the Project manager and functional manager can refer to their supervisor who can mediate the situation. In this way the matrix structure still winds up being productive and collaborative while mediating the potential issues of having two bosses.
