Delivering strategy via projects

Project/program management offices (PMOs) at the divisional or business unit level, or on a specific mission critical/major project, are tasked with this role and provide a common framework for a number of functions to support program/project managers that will include some or all of the following:

• Project/program governance
• Project/program planning and control
• Scheduling and project administration
• Reporting and communications
• Issue and risk management
• Change and scope management
• Quality management
• Financial management
• Benefit realisation tracking
• Project management methodology, practices, tools and templates
• Project management competency, education and training.

Project managers working in an environment with these processes and support functions can focus on stakeholder management and project delivery, confident of having a high probability of successful completion.

Challenges to implementation

Currently, having a clearly defined strategy development process, leading to portfolio selection and program/project delivery with support of a comprehensive PMO function, is an ideal. Only the largest, most progressive organisations come anywhere close to this position, as most enterprises do not have the level of maturity required, and the necessary skills are in short supply.

And what about smaller organisations? These often do not have the resources to support all the functions, but they tend to be more flexible and dynamic, so detailed comprehensive analysis is not required for decision-making. Communication is generally better and projects smaller, reducing risk. They are also more likely to kill projects that are failing. However, they can still benefit from adopting best practice for PMOs and project management to integrate with their decision-making processes.

Projects, by their nature, lead to change and this is often the reason for failure. The Standish Chaos reports lists lack of buy-in and resistance to change as a major reason for project failure. The common practice of defining strategy at the corporate level and giving business units the responsibility for implementation leads to a natural conflict of interest. Managers and staff in business units have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, which is familiar and has a low level of uncertainty. In addition, business units generally control resources and often compromise projects by restricting access to resources.

However, these issues can be reduced if organisations started treating business-as-usual operations as the ongoing benefits realisation from earlier projects; a project to build a factory would have been assessed against return on investment, but would have been considered a cost until it was put into operation.

Many organisations also run programs of continuous improvement to operational processes. These should be seen in context of analysing a production process’ alignment to an operational strategy of quality improvement, essentially cost reduction, and initiating projects to realise potential the benefits of a change in process.

There are many challenges to strategy development and project delivery, but organisations will be better positioned to deliver sustainable benefits if they focused on integrating strategy development and PMO functions with project management, while accepting projects and change are in the long-term interest of everyone.

Fundamentally, it must be remembered that strategy involves planning for change and projects are the means to ensure the capabilities are in place for an organisation to deliver on its strategy and maintain a sustainable enterprise for all its stakeholders.