Last week I attended an ESI class called “Aligning Project Management in Organizational Strategy”. The class was a three day exploration of strategy, strategy development, portfolio management and aligning strategy (and maintaining that alignment) to portfolios and individual projects.
This class got me thinking about the limitations of a project managers’ role in strategy formation and portfolio/project alignment. A project manager’s power of strategy alignment is limited by (1) a weak organizational strategy and (2) a maturity of the project management office (PMO) actively practicing portfolio alignment.
Weak Strategic Foundation
A weak strategic foundation is an unconvincing base on which to align a project. Take for example,a cupcake manufacturer with the vision is to be the number one cupcake manufacturer supplying the midwest United States. Let’s say that vision was authored 5 years ago. Let’s say annual strategies have been formulated on that vision for the last 5 years. When a project manager is assigned a construction project with the scope to build a muffin assembly line that will supply the west coast United States how can a project management champion that project for its alignment to company’s existing vision and strategy? They cannot. If the project is a ‘legitimate’ one with significant return on investment (ROI) and market gains for the company then the 5 year old vision (and hence it’s strategy) is in dire need of revision.
Project Review Process
Regardless if the strategy is solid, a layer of project/portfolio review is necessary to ensure proposed projects/portfolio match to the company’s strategy. Let’s return to our cupcake manufacturer. If the vision of being the top cupcake supplier to the Midwest is still valid and all the annual strategies still support the vision, then some Vice President’s pet muffin assembly line project will not pass portfolio review.
Note: In order to maintain the most up-to-date criteria for review the PMO must be privy to the latest information regarding vision and strategy revision and/or updates.
In short, without relevant, solid strategic foundation and a measured portfolio review process even the most strategic project manager will find himself or herself in an ocean of unaligned projects, unleveraged projects, unfocused teams and mediocre results.
