Organizations execute projects to implement their organizational strategies. It is therefore not surprising that the most successful project managers strive to align the project strategy with organizational strategy. These managers also recognize that project strategy can be both deliberate and emergent.
- Deliberate strategy – a purposeful, organized, and pre-defined plan to guide actions.
- Emergent strategy – an unplanned opportunity that arises from present conditions and situations, often originating from spontaneous innovation.
Alignment of project strategy with organizational strategy requires the implementation of both deliberate and emergent strategies. This alignment is best achieved by a robust project management methodology.
Pre-project planning
In the process of pre-project planning, key elements of organizational strategy will be defined in the initial project plan to create a deliberate project strategy. In the beginning the project plan predominantly answers the question of what the project will accomplish to implement the strategy. At this stage of the project, it is important to incorporate the essential elements of organizational strategy without over-specifying the project requirements. This allows flexibility for the project to adapt and grow as the project progresses.
Pre-project planning sessions can promote project strategic alignment by actively and dynamically engaging diverse project stakeholders in an intensive communication process to achieve agreement, if not consensus, on key project issues. This promotes a rich understanding of the project objectives and constraints. The pre-project planning session creates social interactions that can enable project team members to champion alternatives and facilitate management flexibility, creating fertile conditions for emergent strategies to unfold.
Communication
As the project team comes together it is important to communicate project strategy. The project plan outlines the strategic objectives of the project but may fail to explain why these objectives are important to the project owner. Communicating the “why” behind the “what” can stimulate innovation. In his many writings about Disruptive Innovation, the prominent Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen said that a myopic focus on deliberate strategy may cause opportunities on the right and left to be missed because they are not seen. Incorporating emergent strategy into the project can guard against this myopia. Christensen says “If you’re in a mode of emergent strategy, yes, you have to go after something in a deliberate way. But you have to plan on things to emerge on the right and on the left of that which you may never have thought about before.”
Communication with the project owner throughout the project life cycle is also important. Organizational strategies can change with time. Projects may create unforeseen impacts on organizational strategies. As these situations arise they may require realignment of project strategy with organizational strategies.
Risk Management
Project success often resides inherently in the uniqueness, novelty and risk of a project. Ignoring this uniqueness and novelty in favor of managing only time, cost, and scope, is a recipe for project failure. Risk management can provide an early warning system for the realization of threats and opportunities that influence the project plan.
Resource Management
Project team members may include consultants and contractors who are external to the organization and are unfamiliar with the organization’s strategies. These stakeholders rely on their knowledge of project strategy to guide their actions. Effective team development will leverage the skills of key stakeholders so that their activities align with project strategy.
Solicitations from potential vendors should be rigorously evaluated for their alignment with project and organizational strategy. A proposal that meets minimum requirements at the lowest cost may not offer the best solution to overall project needs. Vendors may be able to provide options that will increase project success when considered over the project lifetime.
Examples
A major consumer products company chartered a construction project to expand a production plant to produce a new product. The project schedule was driven by a marketing strategy to introduce the new product during the Super Bowl the following year. The project team was able to identify innovative ways to crash the schedule, meeting the product delivery expectations of marketing and management.
A multinational industrial company made environmental sustainability an element of their corporate strategy. Initiatives that impacted environmental sustainability were given a lower economic threshold for approval. The project team was able to apply this policy when evaluating suppliers for a major piece of equipment. The economic analysis justified a higher acquisition cost because of reduced energy consumption over the project lifetime.
Conclusion
Project planning defines the deliberate project strategy that is essential to project success. However, project plans are living documents that should be updated throughout the project. The most successful projects will have the vision to see emergent strategy and the flexibility to incorporate it into the project plan. By implementing emergent strategies, projects are much more likely to remain aligned with organizational strategies.