Perfect Alignment: The Right Culture To Meet Strategic Goals

  Governance   Manufacturing   PMO   Strategy   PM Network  

Project professionals face a barrage of day-to-day decisions regarding project minutiae, typically with a head-down focus on schedule, budget and scope. Considering those formidable pressures, they sometimes lose sight of an organization’s bigger picture—namely, its strategic goals.

What steps can executives, project sponsors and portfolio managers take to help ensure that projects are aligned with corporate objectives?

“There can be a wide gap between organizational strategy and project management,” notes Michelle Sirott, PMP, practice director at the Phoenix, Arizona, USA office of Point B, a strategic management consulting firm. Red flags include:

• Lack of organizational strategy: Are strategic goals understood across the leadership team, and are departments held accountable for project plans that align with corporate strategy?
• Individualized performance incentives: Are departments encouraged to work in silos to meet individual goals or to collaborate to meet organizational objectives?
• Unclear project management accountabilities: Where do project managers reside in the organizational structure? Does the project management office (PMO) have a clear charter and sponsorship? Are project managers measured on delivery of business objectives—or just on scope, schedule and resource metrics?
• Poor governance structure:…

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