"The Airport Model™" Article #3: The Organizational Evolution Trap – Why Project Delivery Falters Precisely During Successful Growth?

Shlomi Ozalvo
Dec 22, 2025
5 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

1. On the Critical Need to Align the Delivery Ecosystem with the Organization’s Growth Stages

In the previous article (Article #2: The Hierarchy of Influence), we established that 70% of project delivery failure is a strategic and systemic failure, focused on The Control Tower (40%) and The Airport (30%). Now, the crucial question arises: How and why does this systemic failure occur in the first place?

The answer lies in The Organizational Evolution Trap. Most organizations are born as a "Private Airstrip," and their delivery method is based on the personal intuition of leaders (The Pilot). The moment the organization grows, this structure collapses. The trap is the avoidance of updating the Delivery Ecosystem in line with the true growth stage. This article analyzes the stages of organizational evolution and the critical need to update the 70% layers to maintain consistent delivery capability.

2. The Organizational Evolution Trap in Transition from Private to International Airport

PMx Evolution - Organizational and Delivery Evolution Paths illustration — Organizational and Delivery Evolution Paths

Systemic failure occurs when management ignores the organization's true stage of evolution. Below are the identifying characteristics to help you determine where your organization stands:

Stage A: Private Airstrip
- How the Organization Looks: The organization operates like a commando unit or an early-stage startup; everyone is concentrated around a single flagship product or one central project. There are no complex products in the market requiring ongoing maintenance yet, and communication is direct and informal ("everyone knows everything").
- The Delivery: Anti-systemic and driven by individual talent.
- The Turning Point: Scale-Up occurs when the organization begins working on more than ~5 concurrent projects, and Work in Process (WIP) becomes high.

Stage B: Regional Airport
- How the Organization Looks: The organization is no longer a "single ship" but a fleet of units; it is required to develop new products while simultaneously supporting and maintaining existing versions in the market. Professional departments emerge (R&D, QA, Marketing), and management begins to feel they are "losing touch" with the granular details of every project.
- The Delivery: Delivery is decentralized, and the matrix structure creates friction and resource conflicts.
- The Turning Point: The emergence of diverse project types (e.g., new development alongside legacy maintenance) and the consolidation of business groups operating as Silos.

Stage C: International Hub
- How the Organization Looks: An established organization with a clear hierarchical structure and multiple product lines or business units. The core challenge is complexity and synchronization; there is high interdependence between teams, decision-making becomes a multi-stage (and at times, political) process, and different units compete for budget, executive attention, and the prioritization of limited resources.
- The Delivery: The challenge is maintaining Agility and flexibility within a complex structure.
- The Turning Point: Characterized by PPM becoming too rigid, where decisions are increasingly made in "closed rooms" or through "hallway conversations" that bypass formal systems.

3. Delivery Ecosystem Maturity Stages

In line with the organizational evolution stages (The Airport), the delivery framework must develop through three maturity stages:

Delivery as Art: The delivery framework is entirely dependent on the talent, intuition, and charisma of the individual (The Pilot). There is no formal methodology or structured process, and success is attributed to the high personal capabilities of the project leaders.
Delivery as Process: The delivery framework is committed to formalizing rules, procedures, and methodologies. The goal is to create consistency and manage WIP through formal PPM to cope with growth and the need for systemic repeatability of success.
Delivery as Value Stream: The delivery framework operates non-stop and is committed to Agility and flexibility. The goal is to continuously optimize the end-to-end (E2E) value flow in response to changing business strategies.

4. Integrative Analysis: Solving Systemic Failure at Each Stage

The failure of evolution is the avoidance of updating the four delivery components in line with the needs of the new evolutionary stage. As demonstrated in the accompanying figure illustrating the required alignment between each organizational evolutionary stage and the delivery ecosystem evolutionary stage, a successful transition from one stage to the next requires a parallel shift in delivery maturity.

The following analysis details the systemic improvement required at each critical juncture:

4.1 Stage A: Private Airstrip – Demand for Delivery as Process

This is the birth stage. The primary problem is absolute reliance on The Pilot and zero PPM control. To successfully navigate the Scale-Up (transitioning to Delivery as Process), the following failure points must be addressed:

Control Tower Failure (40%): Total lack of prioritization – every initiative becomes a project.
- Required Improvement: Implementing basic PPM: institutionalizing an initial prioritization forum and defining minimal WIP to prevent system flooding.
The Airport Failure (30%): Lack of role definitions – everyone does everything.
- Required Improvement: Defining a simple RACI to set boundaries of responsibility between the Project Manager and Resource Manager.
The Aircraft (20%): Ad-hoc tools (spreadsheets/messaging apps).
- Required Improvement: Selecting a single basic project management tool to serve as the "Single Source of Truth."
The Pilot (10%): Extreme cognitive load due to managing dozens of micro-tasks.
- Required Improvement: Relieving the Pilot of administrative tasks so they can focus on the core of delivery.

4.2 Stage B: Regional Airport – Demand for Advanced Delivery as Process

This is the stage of dramatic growth and the 70% breaking point. Problems primarily stem from organizational fragmentation and capacity control failure.

Control Tower Failure (40%): Prioritization failure and overload.
- Required Improvement: Rigid capacity management using formal PPM with executive sponsorship to delineate organizational WIP boundaries.
The Airport Failure (30%): Internal friction and resource wars.
- Required Improvement: Institutionalizing active executive sponsorship and creating centralized resource allocation mechanisms to mediate conflicts.
The Aircraft Failure (20%): Execution ambiguity and teams operating with different methods.
- Required Improvement: Unifying the execution platform with central methodology and tools to ensure data reliability.
Pilot Failure (10%): Limited control ("broken dashboard").
- Required Improvement: Developing tactical leadership and training in data-driven decision-making.

4.3 Stage C: International Hub – Demand for Delivery as Value Stream

This is a mature organization. The challenge is maintaining Agility within a complex hierarchical structure. The transition to Delivery as Value Stream is critical for maintaining competitiveness.

Control Tower Challenge (40%): Rigidity – PPM has become a bureaucratic tool that impedes initiative approval.
- Required Solution: Adaptive PPM – implementing continuous and flexible planning (Rolling Wave Planning) that allows for agility in prioritization.
The Airport Challenge (30%): Structural failure (Silos) – separate organizational units prevent strategic resource sharing.
- Required Solution: Holistic resource portfolio management – institutionalizing a strategic body that mediates and synchronizes between business units.
The Aircraft Challenge (20%): Technological fragmentation – using too many tools, fragmented data.
- Required Solution: Platform and data unification – standardization and consolidation of project tracking data to provide the Tower with a true end-to-end (E2E) picture.
Pilot Challenge (10%): Substantive detachment – the Project Manager becomes a tracking and reporting manager instead of a business leader.
- Required Solution: Empowering the Pilot as a business leader – demanding soft skills, strategic thinking, and business understanding.

5. Summary: Transitioning from Improvement to Institutionalization

The Organizational Evolution Trap is the belief that the delivery ecosystem mechanisms that served us in previous maturity stages will continue to be relevant. True growth requires management to take responsibility for the evolution of the 70% systemic components (PPM and The Airport), and to transition from reactive project management to institutionalizing a delivery ecosystem that supports the organization's continuous and complex growth.

The Final Management Message: Systemic Thinking and ROI

"Our delivery doesn't fail because of poor Pilots, but because of failed air traffic planning."

If you want to increase delivery speed, stop investing in improving team performance (the 30% lower components). Instead, invest in removing overload, establishing consistent prioritization, and managing capacity (the 70% upper components). Improving The Control Tower and The Airport yields the highest ROI and unlocks the potential of all active projects in the organization.