5 Benefits All Projects Should Deliver
While aligning a project with business goals is likely to include financial elements, it is most likely to focus on business drivers such as improving productivity, customer service, or increasing market share. Other strategic business goals, for example improving quality, may also come into play.
Project management is a discipline that enables the business strategy to become business reality. Without project work, business goals would never be realised. In this article I outline the benefits of aligning projects with business goals.
1. Develop Focus on Creating Value
When a project is aligned with business strategy, its goals and products will be clearly defined and measurable. This helps you focus on value creation – you will select those projects that are likely to produce high value outcomes, and therefore business units will deliver greater value.
2. Encourage Deeper Executive Sponsorship
Executive sponsorship is mission critical to project managers. If senior level management and board members are not engaged with the project, how can you expect other project stakeholders to be engaged with it? By ensuring that project work is aligned with business strategy, executives are more likely to be engaged more deeply with the project.
3. Eliminate Non-Value Projects
Visit most organisations and you will discover projects that exists just because, and not because they provide any value. By revisiting each of these projects and ensuring they are aligned with current business strategy, you will eliminate all those that aren’t.
4. Allocate Resources More Effectively
By selecting only those projects that are aligned with business strategy, you will save time, energy, and money. During the process of project evaluation, you will quantify which are of highest value to the business – and this allows you to allocate resources more effectively.
5. Create Focus for Project Teams
With the project clearly defined, and its goals set, it becomes the project manager’s task to drive focus within project teams. By communicating effectively, and working back from what the organisation is trying to achieve to what must be done to reach goals, the project team can engage in the creation of milestones and project stages.
Improve Outcomes and Benefits of Project Work
Understanding the benefits that aligning projects with business strategy should deliver will help you deliver these benefits. It enables the project manager to be more focussed on the business itself, and ensure that the organisation selects the most appropriate projects – those that are most likely to add value to the business.
Finally, according to the PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2017, projects that are aligned to business strategy are 57% more likely to succeed, 50% more likely to finish within time, and 45% more likely to be completed within budget. They are compelling statistics.
To ensure your projects benefit from better outcomes and greater success, contact Your Project Manager today:
