Aligning Projects to Business Strategy: Key Benefits and Approaches (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Today, we're talking about how to align your project to business strategy. First, we'll review why it's so important to align your project and the benefits. We'll also review two different types of organizational structures and how you would go about aligning your project depending upon which organization you're in. First of all, let's talk about the why. Today, we talk a lot about sitting at the table. By aligning your project to the business strategy, that's one way to ensure that you, as the project manager, are sitting at the table and not waiting on the annual report to come out for you to understand what's happening in your company. The benefit of that for you is that it allows you to speak the language of business. The second reason why we want to align is it provides a mechanism that allows you to map your project and support the strategic goals. And the benefit of that is it allows your project to contribute directly to the corporate vision. And then the third reason why is it becomes a playbook to anticipate the market trends. As we see almost on a daily basis, the market trends are changing and world events happen that change the priority of our projects. And with that, being able to do this, the benefit is it allows your company to become more agile and competitive. So let's look at two different types of organizational structures, and you'll need to identify which one is yours. First of all, there's the traditional enterprise where the business strategy sets the strategic goals, which spawn the corporate initiatives, the organizational functions, and the tactical operations. In the traditional enterprise, the projects aren't necessarily aligned, but there is a way that we can go back and align them as a project manager. In the project-driven enterprise, the business strategy sets the strategic goals, which then spawn the programs, the projects, and the activities. So determine which one you're in. So for a traditional enterprise, the way that we go about aligning is review all the projects, the current ones and even the future ones. Then develop a systematic approach to prioritize these. And then once you get them prioritized, then you begin aligning to the business strategy. In the project-driven enterprise, which we all want to move forward to, the approach that we do there is you review all the business strategy, the goals for the company. Then you develop a systematic approach to initiate and prioritize those projects. And then basically, you continue to evaluate and repeat on a regular basis. So as you can see, aligning your project to the business strategy does have benefits. It allows you to speak the language of business. Your project to contribute to the corporate vision. And more importantly, your company to become more agile and competitive. So if you need a tool that can help you align your project to the business strategy, then sign up for our software now at projectmanager.com.