As the research data proves, most projects today fail to meet their goals. They
either do not meet time and budget goals, do not meet their business objectives,
or both. In their struggle to improve the project activity, organizations try to use
numerous, mostly traditional ways: better training, improved processes, PMOs,
maturity models, improved reporting and communication techniques, etc. Yet there
is a limit to how much you can improve by just focusing on improved processes
and efficiency. With time, at least conceptually, it seems that most organizations
will exhaust the marginal improvement of processes. In their search for better
competitiveness, organizations will have to move toward a more strategic project
management world. This is the subject of this research, which was initiated and
supported by PMI’s Research Department.
The project management discipline is changing into a new era that is completely
different than it has been in the last fifty years. The new era projects will be consid-
ered as part of the strategic, business-related activity in the organization. While this
is change seems natural, in a somewhat paradoxical way, the traditional project
management discipline has been slow in responding to this trend and formally,
there are very few frameworks, principles, or even tools to address this need.
The premise of this research is simple: it suggests that more and more organiza-
tions in the future will look to improve their competitiveness, and one of their
major candidates is project management (PM). They will realize that they need to
treat their projects in a more strategic way, and will seek new guidelines for aligning
their projects with their business strategy. Similarly, project managers and project
teams will have to learn how to think more strategically and become responsible
for project business results, and not just for ‘‘getting the job done.’’
The question really is, not if to do it, but how to do it? Is there a straightforward
way in which organizations can learn how to align their project activity with their
business strategy? The answer is ‘‘not really.’’ Unlike other well-established business
functions, project management has not yet built the theory and criteria of alignment
with the business strategy, as in fact recognized by the PMI’s OPM3 (PMI 2003).
Our goal in this research was to fill in the gap in the process of ‘‘Linking Project
Management to Business Strategy.’’ But before we present the research questions,
let’s first look at what is still missing.
As the research data proves, most projects today fail to meet their goals. They
either do not meet time and budget goals, do not meet their business objectives,
or both. In their struggle to improve the project activity, organizations try to use
numerous, mostly traditional ways: better training, improved processes, PMOs,
maturity models, improved reporting and communication techniques, etc. Yet there
is a limit to how much you can improve by just focusing on improved processes
and efficiency. With time, at least conceptually, it seems that most organizations
will exhaust the marginal improvement of processes. In their search for better
competitiveness, organizations will have to move toward a more strategic project
management world. This is the subject of this research, which was initiated and
supported by PMI’s Research Department.
The project management discipline is changing into a new era that is completely
different than it has been in the last fifty years. The new era projects will be consid-
ered as part of the strategic, business-related activity in the organization. While this
is change seems natural, in a somewhat paradoxical way, the traditional project
management discipline has been slow in responding to this trend and formally,
there are very few frameworks, principles, or even tools to address this need.
The premise of this research is simple: it suggests that more and more organiza-
tions in the future will look to improve their competitiveness, and one of their
major candidates is project management (PM). They will realize that they need to
treat their projects in a more strategic way, and will seek new guidelines for aligning
their projects with their business strategy. Similarly, project managers and project
teams will have to learn how to think more strategically and become responsible
for project business results, and not just for ‘‘getting the job done.’’
The question really is, not if to do it, but how to do it? Is there a straightforward
way in which organizations can learn how to align their project activity with their
business strategy? The answer is ‘‘not really.’’ Unlike other well-established business
functions, project management has not yet built the theory and criteria of alignment
with the business strategy, as in fact recognized by the PMI’s OPM3 (PMI 2003).
Our goal in this research was to fill in the gap in the process of ‘‘Linking Project
Management to Business Strategy.’’ But before we present the research questions,
let’s first look at what is still missing.
