Taking the Lead on a Strategic Project

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Leadership   Strategy  

To take initiative and get new projects rolling requires leadership—something project managers are well-accustomed to. While they may be normally tasked to oversee and drive a number of project efforts to maintain business and operational standards, there are occasions when they are tapped to take charge of more elaborate endeavors that are designed to better position and provide strategic benefits to their organization (of course, not without some degree of risk).

If you are looking to establish a new project that will help improve your organization’s competitive advantage, then you need to develop a well-defined project strategy to gain you a foothold in the business marketplace. Before you even begin drafting a project plan, the project strategy needs to be laid out with significant detail that demonstrates the overreaching milestones that need to be accomplished—operating more like a program management methodology in that it encompasses a number of projects and deliverables in order to achieve its ultimate goal.

A project strategy can seem a little “ethereal” to some—when well planned and executed, however, it has to encompass a variety of key components and events in order to achieve its deliverable status.

A project strategy operates at a plane above the traditional project plan. …

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