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8/14/2019 Strategy for PM

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Don Mitchell MBA, PMPSenior Consultant, SPMgroup Ltd.

Does Your Organization Have a Strategic Plan forProject Management?

In the June issue of the Project Management Journal Harold Kerzner asserts, Maturityand excellence in project management does not occur simply by using project

management over a prolonged period of time. Rather, it comes through strategicplanning for both project management and the project office1. If indeed thisstatement is a fact the question then needs to be asked, Does your organization have a

strategic plan for project management? Ask yourself, Do I know what this yearsproject management strategic objectives are, how these objectives are being measured,

and what initiatives are underway to ensure that the objectives are met? If you cantanswer these questions then your organization does not have a strategy or they have donea poor job communicating it.

As a management consultant who specializes in assisting organizations develop project

management infrastructure it never ceases to amaze me how many companies do notstrategically plan for project management. If strategic planning for project managementis not the norm then how can one expect strategic issues to be identified, choices made

and decisions implemented that will benefit both the organization and the individualproject manager.

Senior managers expect project leaders to think about the projects mission, vision andobjectives as they begin a new project. Therefore why shouldnt project managers expect

the same in return as senior managers roll out the infrastructure to support them?

Simply stated strategic planning is a set of actions that lead to defining an organizationsmission, vision, goals and the development of strategies that should be implemented tomeet those goals. Killing and Fry in Strategic Analysis and Action describe the links

between mission, vision and strategy as:

The mission defines why we are in business or why we exist, The vision describes what we want to look like in X years, and The strategy describes how we intend to get to our vision. 2

In applying these concepts to project management the mission statement explains whyproject management is needed within the organization, the vision describes what projectmanagement should look like in X months time, and the strategy describes how the

project management vision will be realized.

1Kerzner, Harold Strategic Planning for a Project Office, PM Journal Vol. 34, No. 2, 13-25, ISSN 8756-

9728/032

Fry & Killing Strategic Analysis and Action, Prentice Hall Canada Inc., Third Edition, ISBN 0-13-

328022-5


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Almost all strategic planning processes begin with the planning team conducting anenvironmental scan. To develop meaningful strategies the planning team must be fully

cognizant of the political, economical, social, and technological landscape that influencesproject delivery within their organization. All too often organizations rush to implement

a project management solution without fully understanding the extent of the problems or

bottlenecks that are plaguing their organization.

As earlier stated the mission should focus on purpose and beliefs. When defining theproject management mission statement there are some basic needs to be fulfilled. There

is a need for the mission statement to be clear and understandable to all. The missionstatement should be broad enough to allow flexibility in implementation but not as broadas to lack focus. It should define who the primary customers are, the need to be fulfilled,

and the ultimate contribution project management is expected to provide to theorganization.

Kouzes and Posner define vision as an ideal and unique image of the future. 3 If an

outsider was to stop and question you, could you clearly articulate your organizationsideal and unique image of the future for project management? For those of you with aproject management vision is it feasible, flexible, and can it be stated in twenty-five

words or less? More often then not, someone within the organization has a vision of thefuture state of project management but that vision is rarely communicated, and certainlynot widely shared through all levels of the organization.

Once the future state of project management has been defined it is a good practice to

benchmark the current state. Metrics such as project cycle time; throughput; deliverycosts; slip rates; success, fail and kill rates; and the cost of quality are all important inputsto understanding the project environment. In addition to metric gathering there needs to

be an assessment of the organizations capabilities. Many of us know this as the classicalSWOT type exercise. This is a process where the planning team identifies the strengths,

weaknesses, opportunities and threats confronting the organizations project managementpractice. The project management maturity assessment is an ideal tool for capturingpresent state capabilities and for measuring progress.

Now for the moment of truth, the time when we compare the current project management

performance to the performance required for the successful realization of the vision. Amajor question to be answered here is how different is the existing project managementculture from the required one? Do we have the skills and resources to bridge the gap or is

the gap not bridgeable? If the gap is not bridgeable then it is time to rethink the vision.

Objective setting, a crucial component of strategic planning, is supposed to provide themeans to which the vision will be realized. Before setting overly aggressive objectivesthere is a need to determine where in the product lifecycle your project management

practice sits. Is project management just emerging within your organization, is it in agrowth mode, has it matured or is it in decline? It is not uncommon for organizations to

3Kouzes & Posner The Leadership ChallengeHow to get extraordinary things done in organizations,

Jossey-Bass Publishers, ISBN 1-55542-211


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fail when integrating project management within the culture as a result of choosing thewrong strategies for where they are currently positioned in the product lifecycle. Even

when organizations develop appropriate project management objectives they aremeaningless unless they are tied to practical and realistic measures. The old adage of

what gets measured gets done is certainly applicable in this case. And what are measures

without targets? Measuring project cycle-time in itself does not mean anything yet, whenwe add a 10% reduction target, the measurement becomes very meaningful.

What happens next? It is probably time to develop the initiatives that will be required to

meet the objectives. Experience dictates that the major problem that occurs during thisphase of strategic planning is one that is not uncommon to project managers unrealisticexpectations. Rather than a couple of very well thought out strategic initiatives there is

an attempt to solve all of the organizations projects woes using a shotgun approach. Theoutcome is no one initiative gets executed very well because everyone is too busy trying

to execute a multitude of initiatives at once.

By now you should realize that unless a lot of effort is expended strategic planning forproject management is poorly conceptualized. It is not a once a year activity butsomething that should be ongoing throughout the year. Like many other initiatives it

requires senior management support and should be driven down from the top. The projectmanagement strategic plan should not stand on its own but should be integrated with theorganizations overall strategic planning process.

A plan is only as good as its execution. When it comes to business strategic planning it is

widely known that it is one thing to have a strategic plan and it is another to be able toexecute it. Recently our profession has taken on a rather evangelical approach to tellingothers that if they want their strategic business plans to be executed successfully then

they must rely on sound project management practice. Why is it that we have not takenon this same religious fervor and applied it to strategic planning for project management

within organizations?

It all comes down to a concept project managers know all too well, the concept of risk

versus reward. There is a risk that if we fail to take the time to strategically plan forproject management the bottom line value we so desperately need to demonstrate to our

stakeholders will never materialize. On the other hand for those organizations whostrategically plan for project management or include it into the organizations overallprocess the rewards will be realized through the successful execution of the

organizations strategic business initiatives.

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