Just finished reading an interesting article by Dragan Milosevic and Sabin Srivannaboon in the August 2006 edition of PMI’s PM Journal titled "A Theoretical Framework for Aligning Project Management with Business Strategy" (#1). Srivannaboon also had a similar article published in the December 2006 edition of the PM Journal titled "Linking Project Management with Business Strategy" (#2).
The articles describe a framework that the authors have created that can supposedly be used to align corporate strategy with project selection and management. The articles both have some interesting insights but I think it would take most Project Managers a few weeks to wade through some of the ‘academic speak’ in these articles to get any usefulness out of them. There was one key point from both articles that I’d like to share:
- Alignment of business strategy with project management and selection is a dynamic process (Milosevic & Srivannaboon, pg. 103) & (Srivannaboon, pg. 94)
I think that most experienced project managers probably have already picked up on this, but it is an interesting point to make. I would expect that most seasoned business people would agree with the idea that the process of creating and managing an organization’s strategy is a dynamic process, therefore it is an easy step to make to say that project alignment should be a dynamic process as well.
I do think these articles have built a base for further research and study, a base that I plan to use to build my own research on. My overall opinion is that these articles cover an interesting topic, are well written and quite a bit of research has gone into them but they are a little too ‘academic’ for most practitioners.
References
- Milosevic, D. & Srivannaboon, S. (2006). A Theoretical Framework for Aligning Project Management with Business Strategy. PM Journal August 2006.
- Srivannaboon, S. (2006). Linking Project Management with Business Strategy. PM Journal December 2006.
[tags] Project Management, Strategy, Alignment with Business, Project Strategy [/tags]