TO PROJECT STRATEGY
PETER W. G. MORRIS, Professor of Construction and Project Management
School of Construction and Project Management, The Bartlett School of
Graduate Studies, University College London
ASHLEY JAMIESON, Research Fellow, School of Construction and Project
Management, The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London
ABSTRACT
Much of the management writing around
strategy tends to cover the practices at
the corporate and business level; there is
a dearth of writing about how corporate
strategy gets implemented by projects
and programs and translated into program or project strategies. This paper
reviews evidence from four case studies
together with questionnaire data from
PMI Europe members, which shows that
the processes, practices, and people
issues involved in moving from corporate
strategy to programs and projects is done
in a much more systematic way than is
generally recognized. The findings point
to areas that future revisions of the
PMBOK Guide should be looking at.
Keywords: corporate strategy; project strat-
Introduction
orporate strategy is one of the most actively researched and taught subjects
in business today. Projects and project management are often quoted as
important means of implementing strategy, but there is some confusion in
the literature on how this happens and, in any case, the topic has not been the subject of detailed review.
This paper reports on research funded by PMI, industry, and academia that
addressed the way corporate strategy is developed and implemented via the management of portfolios, programs, and projects. It does so by detailing the key findings from four case studies, together with data from a survey of PMI members.
Business
Strategy
Portfolio
Objectives
Context
Portfolio
Strategy
Program
Objectives
Program
Strategy
Project
Objectives
Project
Strategy
Phase
Objectives
Phase
Strategy
Team
Objectives
Team
Strategy
Individual
Objectives
Individual
Strategy
Linking company strategy to portfolio development is critical, particularly when company strategy involves both
a high degree of innovation and a high
rate of growth (Wadlow, 1999).
Advances in portfolio selection and
management practice have been
notably strong in new product development (Archer & Ghasemzadeh, 2004;
Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 2001),
whereas there is evidence that the top
performing businesses display strong
management support for portfolio
selection and management, using formal portfolio management methods to
manage their portfolio strategy within
the context of the enterprise business
strategy
(Cooper,
Edgett,
&
Kleinschmidt, 1999). Other examples of
portfolio
management
practice
employed by a diversity of major companies are given in Cooper, Edgett, and
Kleinschmidt (1998). Artto and
Dietrich (2004) provide examples of
portfolios of different project types and
an outline of the major types of
methodologies used in portfolio selection. Shenhar and Dvir (2004) propose a
strategic portfolio classification framework that is based on the need to select
projects due to their strategic impact and
to form a policy for project selection.
Project objectives
Project schedule
Project budget
Resource plan
Risk management plan
A complete set of project briefs.
The strategy for the project is managed and maintained through the
operational vision within the business
case, and is in force until the close of
Concept
Execute
Phases of
Each Process
Stage
Key Tasks of
Each Phase
Strategy
Strategy
Scope
Scope
Risk
Risk
Key Topics of
Each Key Task
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In-Service
Corporate CIP
SBUs & Other
Functions CIPs
(Inc AM)
Corp
SBU
ora te
OGSMs
er
OGSM
s/Oth
B
ss Go vernance
usin e
Pro
ject Governance
Proj
ect Board
jects P
Pro
ess
Minor
Projects
Process
AM
Process
oc
M aj o
the project. The lack of a single coherent project strategy document, clearly
related to the business case, can lead to
loss of business rationale in some
cases. It is recognised that there could
be a tighter linkage between business
strategy and project implementation.
Project
Environment
SBU/Project
Environment
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ments and was clearly the major business process. Project and portfolio
management (and program management to a lesser extent) are important
aspects of this process. The financial
services company had a high-level
business process but this was less visible than the aerospace and transportation business models.
Cascading corporate strategies into projects and strategy plans
All the companies created corporate
objectives, goals and strategies using
processes like the strategic management processes described by Mintzberg
and others. As in Turners model, these
objectives, goals and strategies were
cascaded to the SBUs or equivalent
organizational entities, which, in turn,
and in conjunction with corporate
strategy planners, developed their own
objectives, goals, and strategies. The
SBUs subsequently developed objectives, goals, and strategies with and for
their respective program and project
teams, again in some instances using
fully interconnecting business and
project management processes. The
importance of project portfolio management was recognized by all the
companies.
In all four cases the program
and/or project teams developed project
strategies that aligned with the SBU and
corporate strategy using project strategy
or similar processes. The outputs of the
processes containing the objectives,
goals, and strategies included strategy
plans, business plans, deployment
plans and project plans, the hierarchy of
which, in most cases, was similar to
Archibalds hierarchy of objectives,
strategies and projects, as reflected in
the aerospace case in Figure 2.
The pharmaceutical development
company reviewed and rebalanced its
portfolios frequently formally, every
six months. The interaction of emerging
trial results data on the therapy area
portfolio strategy was strongly evident,
and project managers (and project
directors) took a leadership role in
shaping the next phase of implementation. This required new proposals for
project or program strategy and these
influenced portfolio strategy.
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14
Almost all
85
75
85
Most
75
65
50
45
55
75
50
75
45
65
60
55
85
85
75
65
75
65
55
85
55
80
55
40
55
25
75
40
80
56
80
2. Those that did not formally define the project management skills
and knowledge competencies incorporated the management of
project strategy in job descriptions or job specifications.
50
60
45
70
75
80
65
66
tencies defined, of which 75% included those for managing the strategy
development process. (See Box 3.)
A combined analysis of the findings of the case studies and survey was
then carried out, the results of which
are reflected in the findings and conclusions below.
Overall findings and conclusions
Before reviewing the overall conclusions of the research, a number of
caveats and cautions should be made
regarding the reliability and generalizability of the research findings.
There is clearly a limitation on the
generalizability due to:
The size and scale of the investigation;
The sample of case studies;
The size of the survey;
The types of programs and projects; and
The effectiveness and performance of
the processes, practices and competencies surveyed.
All the companies were at different stages of developing, implementing or improving their business
models and the information therefore
was time-specific.
The scope of the survey was
broad and therefore the number of
questions per topic was relatively
small. Consequently the coverage
and depth of some topics such as
value management and competencies
were limited. A few respondents to
the questionnaire indicated that
some questions were ambiguous and
could be interpreted differently. Also,
some of the terms may not be well
known,
for
example
Value
Management. The survey analysis did
not take account of different business
sectors.
Overall, the response rate was
too small for the results to be statistically valid and to be treated as anything other than indicative.
Despite these caveats, we nevertheless feel a number of conclusions can
be drawn from the research.
Moving from corporate to project strategy
Project and program management is
widely used as a means of implementing corporate and business strategy
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DR. PETER MORRIS is Professor of Construction and Project Management at University College London (UCL) and Visiting
Professor of Engineering Project Management at the University of Manchester. He is also Executive Director of INDECO, an
international projects-based management consultancy. He has written over 120 papers on project management as well
as the books The Anatomy of Major Projects (Wiley, 1987) and The Management of Projects (Thomas Telford, 1997); he is
the editor, with Jeffrey Pinto, of the Wiley Guide to Managing Projects (Wiley, 2004) and co-author with Ashley Jamieson
of Translating Corporate Strategy into Project Strategy: Achieving Corporate Strategy Through Project Management (PMI,
2004). In 2005, he received the PMI Research Achievement Award.
ASHLEY JAMIESON worked for many years as a business manager, senior program manager, and project manager with
global aerospace and defense companies. For the last few years, he has been working with Peter Morris on a variety of
research projects. At Manchester, he carried out research into design management in major construction projects, and
was a visiting lecturer in project management. At UCL, he recently completed the PMI-funded research project on how
corporate strategy is translated into project strategy, which forms the basis of this paper. He was recently Research Fellow
on a project updating the APM BOK. He holds an MSc in Engineering Business Management. In addition to this PMI
publication, he is a contributor to the Wiley Guide to Managing Projects (Wiley, 2004).
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