We have often witnessed projects and programs undertaken only to realise later, that these projects which initially seemed worth undertaking, were not aligned to the company’s vision and strategy.

Today the rapid pace at which projects are being launched by various teams across the company, limits their bandwidth to validate the strategic alignment of these projects. They end up with projects that fulfil a tactical need, with little or no value to the company.

This is more apt in today’s ecosystem where companies are expected to rapidly innovate and transform, to remain relevant and competitive. In their pursuit to stay ahead and capitalise on the rapid pace of innovation, they are compelled to launch several projects either in succession or in parallel as part of the company’s business transformation plans.

On one hand they need to maintain their business as usual, and on the other they need to pursue their transformation plans. The challenges faced by most companies is poor alignment of projects to programs, thereby making their programs irrelevant to their portfolios. This weak alignment extends a fragile fitment to company’s enterprise architecture.

The fifth technology wave led by cloud, mobility, analytics, social, internet of things and robotics brings about its own complexities and risks. The definition of what used to be a complex project has drastically changed over the last two decades, if not more. The perception of a “complex project” has gone through its own metamorphosis right from the age of mainframes, minicomputers, distributed client-server, internet to the digital era. Delivering successful projects at an unprecedented pace, while helping the business transform, has undoubtedly been overwhelming task to manage.

For enterprise wide transformations to be successful, the initiatives should be aligned to the company’s strategic objectives. These initiatives which are led by projects and programs must be strategically aligned, while managing complexities.

Several factors that drive complexities

Traditionally project and program complexities were driven by the classical factors of managing people, systems and processes. There are several factors that drive complexities viz. lack of clear vision, weak executive ownership; technology adoption; unpredictable behaviour across stake holders; ambiguous understanding of the end user’s requirements; fragile governance structure and more.

To manage complexities, companies should focus on managing the 3C, 3R, 3S, 3T and the interdependencies between them.

— 3C: Clarity, Communication and Culture

— 3R: Risks, Resources and Results (Quality)

— 3S: Stakeholders, Scope and Schedule within Budget

— 3T: Trust, Transparency and Teamwork

Holistic approach

Companies should pause to take a holistic approach to their business. They need to derive their strategic objectives from their vision, mission, goals and aspirations. Based on their strategic objectives, they derive their initiatives (programs and projects) that would help transform their company.

In the process, companies will learn which strategic objectives are not being supported by their ongoing and planned initiatives (projects and programs). In the same token, they will also learn which projects and programs are not strategically aligned. Rationalisation of initiatives at this stage will help the company optimise their investments required to support their strategic objectives.

To ensure projects and programs are aligned to the strategic objectives, companies could consider the following guidelines:

1. Commit to initiating and establishing a portfolio management supported by the executive management level

2. Identify the company’s transformation plans across the enterprise, along with the mitigations plans for the known risks

3. Ensure the company’s strategy and transformation plans are in sync

4. Derive the initiatives that will support the strategic objectives

5. Assess ongoing projects and programs for their alignment to the company’s strategic objectives

6. Include new projects and programs to meet the strategic objectives, that were not being addressed earlier

7. Take corrective steps to either discontinue or amend the ongoing projects and programs that were not aligned to the strategic objectives

8. Arrive at a revised list of strategically aligned projects and programs, that need to be reviewed on an ongoing basis, as part of the portfolio management process

9. Maintain a risk register across current and planned projects and programs

10. Input any additional information/data, to support the portfolio decision making framework that would guide the management in making decisions.

11. High risk projects should be closely monitored and managed. Their high impact could jeopardise the company’s transformational plans.

12. The revised portfolio should be continuously updated, to keep it relevant for companies undertaking their transformational plans, besides managing their business as usual.

The writer is the Executive Vice-President of Dubai-based TransSys Solutions. He can be contacted via Twitter @Stephen_Fdes