Do you manage projects within your organization? Are you keen to climb up the ladder of success with better organizational positions and salaries? Have you considered being up to date with new trends and practices in Project Management? The Strategic Project Management course fulfills all your needs with comprehensive coverage of strategic business knowledge and core Project Management practices.
With a section dedicated to the role of the project manager in both large and SMEs, it prepares you for one of the hottest and rewarding job roles in any company. With this course, you can secure lucrative positions across all industries and companies and gain a better perspective on Project Management from a strategic perspective.
What is Strategic Project Management?
Before we delve into Strategic Project Management, let us first explore what Project Management is.
Project management is the practice of managing a project from conceptualization to fruition, where a project manager is a person who leads and supervises the whole project.
However, Strategic Project Management looks at the project in its entirety from the perspective of the company and the benefit the project can bring to the company for improving efficiency and giving a competitive advantage. It leverages Project Management methods like brainstorming and problem solving to improve project efficiency and success. As the word “strategic” suggests, Strategic Project Management applies a ‘strategic’ vision to the portfolio of projects.
Strategic Project Management moves beyond simply managing projects to implementing the traditional Project Management skills and techniques and aligning with the organizational strategy, instead of merely focusing on the routine issues like time, budget and performance. Projects don’t have to be big in terms of volume or context, but they are critical for delivering your goals for justifying the time and resources invested. The framework manages dependencies and resources.
Why Strategic Project Management is important for an Organisation
It is increasingly perceived that Project Management teams must align projects with the business objectives and the company’s business policy and path to sustainability.
Research and precedence have shown that many organizations do not attain the targets in project execution. For instance, the completion of the project within the forecast timespan, budgetary considerations, approved quality, customer satisfaction, and so on. It is because organizations endeavor to better the project implementation in a conventional manner using a time-honored, hands-on approach like employee learning, work process enrichment, and software support. This limits the efficacy and productivity of the project execution, compromising the strategic aspect and impacting the business edge.
A strong organizational culture facilitates better employee management and motivation to perform tasks that align with the strategic roadmap. Lower-level managers and employees are also engaged in the strategic process in Strategic Project Management.
Good Project Management helps deliver the outcomes on time, within budgets, and with the project scope. It brings clients and teams on the same page and generates a mental image of what a successful project should be like. With streamlined Project Management, there is a constructive environment that reflects in the entire organizational ethos, end to end.
These are the reasons why Strategic Project Management is important:
Strategic alignment with business objectives
Clients have end targets that they want project managers to achieve. Strategic Project Management ensures that the project manager aligns the project with the client’s tactical framework and plans. It is equally important that value is delivered to the client. The manager prevents a project from going off-tangent and makes a timely course correction in such an event, thus averting delays and losses.
Empowers leadership
Strategic Project Management brings the team under the effective leadership of the manager, who ensures that all team members function seamlessly across the projects. Accountability for the entire project rests solely with the project manager, who motivates and manages the entire team to get the best outputs.
Ensures quality control
Dedicated Project Management ensures quality control. Projects are not only completed within budget and resource allocation but also tested in a continuum for quality assurance.
Maintains ongoing supervision
In Strategic Project Management, projects are tracked and monitored periodically against milestones with suitable documentation and status reports to check against departure from the original plans. Ongoing supervision helps to see when projects are deviating from original schemes so that the necessary changes are made before it is too late. Small, digestible reports make monitoring seamless and help to gain the trust of stakeholders.
Provides subject expertise
Strategic Project Management requires good knowledge of everything to lead the various teams through the projects, including technical skills and subject matter of the various departments through which the projects are implemented. With subject expertise, projects are executed with a wholesome approach, with every element efficiently integrated into the project cycle for project success.
Enables a better risk management
Strategic Project Management is important for an organization as project risks are regularly reviewed and addressed to prevent loss of resources or the projects becoming irrelevant to the stakeholders. Identification of potential risks makes it easier for quantification and identification of risks against a risk contingency plan.
Facilitates continuous management and improvement
Strategic Project Management ensures that the various plans and Project Management process is followed throughout the project lifecycle to achieve the end objectives. The right people in the team do the right things the right way to make the project a success. Instead of being in a latent survival mode, projects are subject to ongoing management for continuous process improvement on the go, from conception to delivery. It helps to follow functional roles diligently, streamline processes, predict risks, and create a system of checks and balances for projects to be aligned with the overall strategy.
How an organization benefits from Strategic Project Management
When Strategic Project Management is executed, the following benefits are accrued:
- Business prioritization: Teams working on the project are better aligned with business goals, so the focus is Omnidirectional, providing impetus to project managers for prioritization of company objectives.
- Streamlined decision-making: As accountability lies with the project manager, decision-making and monitoring happen across the project lifecycle for seamless project execution.
- Improved business perception: Risks and opportunities discovered during project implementation can be reviewed against the lens of company goals as and when events occur instead of waiting till the completion of projects and the annual review.
- Suitable budget allocation: It is possible for budgets to be allocated based on the end goals and organizational priorities, and funds released accordingly.
Takeaway
Project Management matters. An orderly, efficiently executed process with the accountability of the project manager averts project failure, resource misuse, and erosion of trust in business relationships. It is why companies are implementing Strategic Project Management and creating the demand for Strategic Project Management skills.
