Organisations are Failing to Implement their Corporate Strategy because of Poor Project Management

Many organisations treat strategy management and project management as parallel disciplines when they actually complement each other. Corporate strategy is the overarching plan that guides an organization’s decisions and actions to achieve its long-term goals and objectives. Project management is an essential technical methodology of implementing corporate strategy. It involves the planning, execution, and control of projects to ensure that they are completed successfully, on time, and within budget. Both of these disciplines are interdependent because effective implementation of any strategy requires effective project management. Research conducted by various research institutions in Botswana such as University of Botswana, Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis, Botswana International University of Science and Technology indicate that strategy implementation problem is caused by poor project implementation both in public and private sector.

Most of these research findings point out to poor project management culture which is a clear sign that many organisations do not have project management frameworks that they use to manage projects implementation. In the absence of this framework organisations become disorganised in the way they manage projects. For example, some organisations start project when there is no clear project governance plan which is a sign of poor project planning. This means projects are implemented without following project best practices prescribed in PMBOK and Project Management Institute. Some of these best practices include project business case, project scope, project charter, project governance plan, implementation plan, monitoring and evaluation plan, quality assurance plan, communication plan, change management plan, risk management and project acceptance plan. This is how strategy fails because there is no culture of project excellence.

This article articulates how these two concepts are interdependent. The first step in implementing corporate strategy is to ensure that all projects are aligned with the organization’s strategic goals and objectives. Each project should have a clear and direct link to the strategic objectives of the company. Without a clear alignment, the organisation may implement projects that do not address their strategic direction. To counter this strategic tragedy organisations are advised to have business case of their projects right from strategy planning. Generally, this should happen in strategic choices step of the strategic management process when initiatives are evaluated to determine their suitability, acceptability and feasibility using the SAFE model. The initiative evaluation metrics should include both strategy needs criterions and project selection criteria. This is critical because it will save the organisation time of duplicating closely related activities of initiative evaluation and project business case that can happen concurrently. The ultimate goal of these activities is to have strategic projects that will deliver strategic objectives outcomes. Once proper projects are selected and prioritized, they are implemented using a project management framework for effective project management.

A project management framework is a structured methodology or set of guidelines that provides a systematic approach for planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing projects. It serves as a foundation for standardizing project management practices within an organization, which, in turn, helps ensure that projects are completed efficiently, on time, and within budget while meeting their objectives. It consists of key project phases, management areas, key process and expected phase deliverables that have to be managed during implementation. Similarly, strategy implementation includes some of the key project management areas and processes such as strategy scorecard which is a framework that assess and track initiative implementation and progress in achieving strategic goals and objectives. This strategy execution thinking is further applied during project implementation plan which is a detailed document that outlines the steps, activities, resources, and timelines necessary to carry out a strategic project successfully. It is a critical component of project management and serves as a roadmap for how a project will be executed from start to finish. Moreover, project implementation requires implementers to identify and leverage the industry standards and best practices best suitable for each strategic project.

This means, there is no one size fits all project methodology and the current way of using waterfall methodology in implementing all projects is a sign of bad project practice. There are other effective methods such as kanban, scrum, agile and prince 2 that can be used to implement certain strategic projects. In addition to the above, key implementation management areas that are critical in the success of every project and that are shared by these two disciplines are risk management plan, change management plan, communication plan, performance, and measurement plan. In conclusion organisations should start having a new mindset and understand that strategy and project management units are two interdependent units that should share certain objectives and KPIs. Furthermore, organisations should have their own project management frameworks to improve their project maturity level.