Assessing Strategic Management of Projects

Assessing Strategic Management of Projects
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Assessing Strategic Management of Projects
With rapid technological change, increased economic resources and accelerated competition, business leaders and project managers are constantly in search of better ways of managing projects. Callahan and Brooks (2004) observed that many organizational projects are still managed ineffectively leading to substantial losses in profitability, productivity as well as employee morale. The traditional emphasis of executing projects within budget, meeting time and project scope goals are no longer adequate to guarantee the realization of organizational goals, hence the need for strategic project management (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007). This paper describes strategic management of projects in an organization. It describes how strategic project management affects a company’s ability to grow in an ever-changing environment with inadequate resources, increased competitive pressure, and need for organizational change to accommodate new challenges. The paper also highlights the future of project management, and how an organization might improve its position with project management.
According to Callahan and Brooks (2004), strategic project management (SPM) involves selecting, managing as well as measuring the project outcomes in order to ensure an optimal value for the organization. They added that every project undertaken by a company or organization must satisfy a set of criteria created by the company’s leadership to ensure there is alignment with the company’s strategic vision. In SPM, the right projects are picked for the organization to ensure the best possible results. An organization can use SPM techniques to gain a competitive advantage, and this will help to counter increased competitive pressure. For an organization to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace, it has to carefully identify and select the right projects to undertake (Naughton & Green, 2006). SPM gives an organization a different method of prioritizing projects by determining the projects that are more critical and urgent, hence should be undertaken first. For instance, if an organization’s competitive advantage is to introduce new and innovative products in the market more quickly than competitors, projects that would enable the company get the product to the marketplace more quickly would be the most critical and should be undertaken first. Poor project management could hurt a company’s ability to gain a competitive advantage (Grundy & Brown, 2002).
SPM has an effect on an organization’s ability to grow in an environment that is ever changing, and characterized by limited resources. Lewis, (2007) stated that all organizations have finite resources, which limit the number of projects that it can control and initiate. These resources include equipment, funding, people or facilities that are necessary for the completion of a p...