connecting business strategy and business management
Exercise 2
The article “connecting business strategy and business management” explain the importance of a company merging strategy development and business management for the realization of its goals. The author describes such leadership as benefits realization management (BRM). The value of BRM lies in its ability to bring closer strategy and project management through three means. First, identify the real strategic outcome to manage portfolios. This step requires additional metrics rather than the traditional budget, scope, and time used to determine project success. Second, providing a committed space for meaningful communication. The linking of strategy to the project requires a consultative engagement between stakeholders. Finally, the company must have an appropriate success condition that defines expected behavior and proper leadership. Once these parameters are available, the action plan takes over. Some of the required activities are selecting the right project, involving project managers throughout, developing and enhancing the proper behavior, articulating mechanism to connect strategy and project, linking stakeholders to outcomes, and finally formalizing the results.
The success of project management relies on a well-defined benefit register that must have a metric of measurements. A benefit register has three main points that deal with identifying benefits, executing of benefits, and sustaining benefits. During benefits identification, the manager should be able to answer if they are in line with the business’s strategic goal, if they are intangible or tangible, duration of attainment and if the benefits are measurable at the end of the project. The matrices for execution include communication, effect project output on business benefit, repeated viewing of a plan against the checklist, and a mechanism to identify new opportunities. As for sustainability, the matrices include communication of results to stakeholders, the handling of results by business owners, measuring of results against sustainment plans, the reception of lessons learned and identification of anticipated benefits
Project Management Office
A project management office (PMO) is a department in an organization in charge of the process flow up and management. Their objective is to ensure the product is unique and is delivered on time. Depending on the needs of a business, there can be three types of PMOs, namely supportive, controlling, and directive. Supportive PMO offers supporting services like on-demand expertise, best practices, templates, and access to information. Controlling PMO is an auditor who ensures documentation, procedure, and process match the needs of the project. Last, directive PMO takes control of the whole project and avails the needed resources and experience. Having a professional PMO induces professionalism in the project and higher consistency.
A successful project relies on the competency of a PMO who serves on several roles. A PMO is responsible for providing governance in an organization, ensuring the right decision making from an adequately informed background. The governance duties may include audits, developing programs and project structure, and enforcing accountability. The PMO also ensure there is transparency in the project. A PMO is expected to be a source of timely, relevant, and accurate information. This role ensures there are no errors in the decision-making process. The PMO also acts as a center for information for everyone. When there is a central source of information, the team always has a referral point for best practices, templates, and lessons learned. The presence of PMO reduces bureaucracy, making it easy for other members to accomplish their work through coaching mentoring and training. PMO acts as a store for documentation, detailing organizational knowledge and project history needed for traceability purposes.