In my post yesterday, I highlighted why the BRM concept is useful for any management that is serious in steering the organization towards realizing strategies. Today, I will discuss how this gap can be bridged through BRM. Having known the importance of BRM, management outght to come up with a good approach on how to implement it in their organizations. To do this, we will look at the following factors:
Portfolio management based on strategic outcomes: As explained in my post yesterday, most organizations still assess the value of their projects based on yesteryear parameters such as time, scope, and budget. Naively, they use these metrics and consider that projects that are completed punctually and within the provided budget to be great success, even though they may have no connection to the strategy of the organization. To turn around this, the organization needs to start thinking along the lines of project management and how they can measure success differently. This is a daunting task, even for BRM-mature organizations. A case in study is an organization that goes ahead to develop an app for its customers to help them boost sales and lure their customers towards more purchases. It could be the case that the IT department develops and delivers the software as agreed on schedule and within the budget. This will be touted by the organization as a great success. However, if the customers aren’t using it, then it won’t in any way have an impact on the cash flow or improve the company’s financial status. There needs to be a clear roadmap that neworks strategy and project portfolios for projects that are being undertaken. This needs organizations to develop a culture of genuinely defining, managing and tracking progress against KPIs that are explicitly tied to strategic outcomes. The mangement needs the nerve to kill projects which wont yield any strategic improvements.
Communication arena between executive and leadership team: There should be an active engagement and shared responsibility among theexecutive management who set and approve strategy, business owners who translate the strategy into projects with targeted outcomes for their area of the business, and project managers who manage the execution of projects to realize those outcomes. Getting these three stakeholder groups to be engaged is a key priority for ensuring benefits realization. In many organizations, ensuring shared responsibility across these groups to meet strategic business outcomes is a clear opportunity, that should not go unrealized. Continous dialog between these stakeholder groups is vital during project execution. Transparency on how well projects are helping to achieve strategic outcomes does help to create space for dialog and gives the executive the need in-depth information and insight they need to have broader strategic discussions early on and on a continuous basis. This creates room for making course corrections where it may be necessary.
Creating an environment for success and having the right team: To grow to a level of BRM maturity, there is need for organizations to invest in the right environment. They need to understand the needed behavior and where they may be forced to change company culture. These may include the needed to have frequent assessment and realignment of projects to meet strategic outcomes, high level of accountability for project progress, quick decision-making characterized by solid problem solving and ability to prioritize solutions, and give early warnings on issues that could be risks. The management should embrace constructive dialog with the project managers to forge a united working team and improve BRM growth. Additionally, project managers should be supported to acquire the right skill set and be acquainted with their working domain.
With the right insight, the management should provide a big-picture perspective and guide the organization to pivot both individual projects and the overall portfolio to be able to better capture the projected value. BRM helps create this visibility and insight, serving as a compass that points to “true north” regarding the company’s strategy, highlighting deviations between project objectives and outcomes and that strategy, and giving leaders the opportunity to course-correct at a point where small changes can still make a big difference. That ensures that the management can take decisive action to support those projects that most directly link to strategy, hence closing the gap.
Project Management 