Need an org chart to map your team? Below, we'll explain what Organizational Charts are, why you need them, how to customize our 49-slide template to get you started, and if you read until the end, you'll learn how a product company like Dell could use org charts to develop their next hit product. While it's nice to see all of the faces of the people in charge, org charts are for more than to establish hierarchy. They're actually great collaboration tools that are best shared across teams so stakeholders know who to reach out to or who they'll work with on a specific project or team. They are also great for overall project management because your team is also a resource.
Ask follow up
Org charts can be easily forgotten to create or update, and can come back to bite a team with a bunch of work that no one wants to do. The customizable Organizational Charts (Part 2) template we've created includes some of the best org chart visualizations for you to download and customize to your needs. Here's a review of some of our favorites and how you can use them for various business needs.
Ask follow up
Traditionally, when people think of an org chart, they think of a tree shape that branches out to show a team's hierarchy. This visualization branches out from left to right to fit more information on a single slide. The light blue branches are the executive team. They are probably the lead of their respective team or department, and could also be customized to department names with the leads and reports underneath. (Slide 3)
Ask follow up
Organizational charts typically show who falls under what umbrella and who is responsible for certain tasks. But this visualization can serve a cross-functional purpose. Let's say you're working on a project that entails input from several different teams and each task includes several sub tasks. This visualization is helpful to list task names and the department (or individual) that is involved in the task.
Ask follow up
If the task is market research, it would involve the marketing team and sales team, but wouldn't necessarily involve the IT team, operations, engineers, finance, or HR, so these teams can be toggled on and off. However, a product mockup task would involve the IT and engineer teams and could involve input from sales or marketing, but definitely wouldn't involve input from HR, so those teams can be toggled off. (Slide 22)
Ask follow up
A SCRUM team org chart shows the title and role of each team member as well as their skillset. This visualization creates a legend and label structure to visualize these roles. The key on the right-hand side shows that the grey icons indicate the skills themselves while the color keys relate to titles and positions that have those skills. Fill in the shapes with the respective title color to feature that role. For more on how a company like Dell could use this tool to help develop its latest product, watch to the end. (Slide 24)
Ask follow up
There is also an agile team visualization. This slide shows any dependencies between team members and tasks. The agile framework is designed around many rounds of rapid iterations and tests. Each column represents different iterations, while each personnel involved is listed as rows. The blue dots relate to features, while the green dots refer to a level of dependency. The editable curves can easily be copied, pasted, and dragged to show the dependency and the relationship between each. To actually visualize the responsibilities and task allocation of each member or project, you can use the RACI team matrix presentation template we have. (Slide 26)
Ask follow up
A regional org chart is great for companies with teams or offices in separate locations. This slide visualizes the names, responsibilities, and country where each team is located. For instance, this could be useful for sales teams that have regional divisions or branches to better serve their diversity of clients. For multiple slides tailored to individual regions, you can check out our other presentation called the Ultimate Map Collection, which features editable maps of every majority country and region to visualize more locally-based teams. (Slide 14)
Ask follow up
Dell had one of its best quarterly earnings reports ever in Q1 of 2022. Let's say you're a tech product company like Dell, and you're about to launch a new initiative. As the project manager, you'll be responsible to make the organizational charts that dictate the team roles and responsibilities on this new product development.You'll need to determine who will be involved across each step of the product development roadmap. For instance, when will the marketing team need to be looped back in after the initial product is created?
Ask follow up
Dell's Innovation team utilizes agile development, so it could use this slide to plot out which features, tasks, and team members are dependent on each other to map out the best timeline towards completion. In Dell's case, the company has globally distributed design centers, with multiple original design manufacturers across various geographic regions and industry sectors. This naturally means they have countless remote team members that all contribute to the design and development of projects that range from personal PCs to industrial cloud storage services. To visualize all of this, the PM could use this slide to show which teams or team members will be involved across all of the company's key regions to facilitate remote collaboration.
Ask follow up
If you need new org chart visualizations to manage your team, you need this presentation. Download the Organizational Charts (Part 2) presentation template for more slides with additional org chart visualizations, an effectiveness assessment, team charter canvas, the competing values framework, day in the life of visualizations, and many more to save time and hours of work.
Ask follow up