Organizational Project Management: Linking Strategy and Projects

By Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Improve Your Business Results Through Organizational Project Management
Organizational project management (OPM) aligns project deliverables with strategy. Understanding this emerging process is essential for all stakeholders, from the corporate sponsor to project team members. OPM is a valuable new tool that can enhance your organization's successful execution of projects in alignment with strategic priorities.
Under the editorship of Rosemary Hossenlopp, PMP, ten contributors from around the globe, representing a wide variety of industries, offer valuable insights on how OPM can give any organization the competitive edge. They discuss how to
• Improve business outcomes
• Better align project work with strategies
• Set priorities
• Organize project work
Whether you direct projects, fund projects, or conduct project work, Organizational Project Management: Linking Strategy and Projects is vital to your understanding of this emerging business discipline.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781567262988

Book preview

execution.

CHAPTER 1

OPM: Delivering Business Results from Enterprise Strategy

Russ McDowell, PMP

Are you having trouble getting the results you expect from projects you undertake? Do you struggle to decide which initiatives will deliver the best returns or benefits for your organization? Are you trying to take advantage of new opportunities or implement new initiatives in your company but finding that the implementation never seems to go right? Do you need to improve your organization’s capacity to respond to today’s challenging business environment?

In this chapter, you will discover how you can use organizational project management (OPM) to deliver project results by implementing your enterprise strategies. You will learn:

How to use proven techniques to implement your organizational strategy—and get tangible results

How to establish a flexible management approach to capitalize on new opportunities

About the importance of ensuring each project delivers the business outcomes promised to stakeholders

Effective ways to ensure the alignment of investments in projects with the strategies of the organization

How to establish objectivity in the selection and support of projects, based on business criteria.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, a company’s overall approach to OPM will determine whether it is able to address necessary, critical changes identified in executive management’s strategic directions and decisions—and even if the organization will survive.

Most organizations are just in the beginning stages of achieving their strategic objectives through the adoption of project management (PM) best practices. Project managers have their heads down in project work. Executives are buried in bad news. What should we do about this? Start a dialog between project managers and executives on how to deliver benefits, align projects to strategy, and stop wasting time on project work that doesn’t matter.

This is OPM. It is the bridge between an organization’s strategy and operational outcomes. It is about a real conversation that needs to occur—now!

Whatever You Do, Don’t Stand Still!

Today’s organizations face many challenges, including:

The pressure of globalization and new market opportunities

The need to increase revenues and decrease costs

The chaos of mergers and acquisitions

The relentless cry to increase efficiency

Pressure to reduce time to market for new products

Downsizing/rightsizing/outsourcing

The accelerating pace of technology change

Legislative changes (e.g., the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; banking and financial reporting regulations).

In addition, the recession that began in 2008 has shown that no company or industry is immune to the current turbulence in the market. Pain is everywhere. The spectacular failures of the housing, banking, and automotive industries have provided all too many examples. If your organization is to prosper, it’s not enough to stand still. You must adapt quickly to a rapidly changing environment.

Projects, by their nature, are the ideal mechanism for implementing the fast-paced, focused changes that are so necessary to today’s business environment. By definition, projects are temporary endeavors, focused on implementing unique solutions while accommodating constraints of resources and scope.

How Can OPM Help?

To understand how OPM can help contribute to the success of your organization, it is first necessary to understand the position that OPM and projectized activities play in the day-to-day life of an