Strategic management is very well documented in business books and in the literature, but that does not make the task any easier. Because formulating and implementing strategy is so taxing, and the environmental signals are so intangible, strategic planning is a responsibility that is easy to avoid. The solution proposed in this book is a project management framework to advance organizational strategy. In this book, you’ll find not only a description of how use the project management framework to advance strategic management, but also a case study that illustrates the positive impact.

The chaotic business environment within the information age in which firms operate today requires that companies carefully direct their resources and capabilities toward strategic goals. Strategic planning is an essential component of marshaling all functions of the company in order to attain and maintain a competitive advantage. Further, strategic planning outcomes are often implemented by strategic initiatives that also involve the management and implementation of change. The struggle faced by managers today is that the process of developing, selecting, implementing and controlling strategic and change initiatives may be loosely defined and only weakly managed in any given company. Project management--long considered to be a set of management processes for use in the purely technological environment--offers a set of well-defined processes that guide senior management to conceive of and implement strategy and change in a careful and closely managed manner. The time is now for executives to remove project management from off the technology shelf and apply it for use in strategy and change development and implementation.

As an executive, your organization may have limited resources. This book will instruct you and your leadership teams on implementing strategy through identifying, selecting, prioritizing, resourcing, and governing an optimal work portfolio. You’ll learn how to sponsor every project stage, as well as leading project managers as direct reports. Detailed advice is given for developing project management competency and utilizing input from customers, employees, and processes. You’ll learn how your organization can capitalize upon information technology to become competitive and to effectively implement business strategies, as well as how to make portfolio and project decisions using both qualitative and quantitative data and reliable analysis methods.

This book provides a stakeholder-centered analysis of projects and explains which identification, analysis, communication, and engagement models are relevant to different types of projects. If stakeholders matter, then they must make a difference in the way we plan structure and execute projects. Do they matter on your projects? This book provides a stakeholder-centered analysis of projects and explains which identification, analysis, communication, and engagement models are relevant to different types of projects: from an office move to IT enterprise change to transformational business change and complex social change. Using case studies from around the world, it illustrates what goes wrong when stakeholders are not engaged successfully and what lessons we can learn from these examples. In this second edition, we also look at the impact of Agile practices on the stakeholder management process. What changes in approach can we anticipate, and what practices must continue regardless of the product development life cycle adopted? Key models introduced include: Role-based and agenda-based stakeholders; The stakeholder-neutral to stakeholder-led project continuum; The extended stakeholder management process; Purposeful communication—the six whys model for communication; The principles of stakeholder engagement; Stakeholder engagement in an agile world.

When Fortune Magazine estimated that 70% of all strategies fail, it also noted that most of these strategies were basically sound, but could not be executed. The central premise of Strategic Project Management Made Simple is that most projects and strategies never get off the ground because of adhoc, haphazard, and obsolete methods used to turn their ideas into coherent and actionable plans. Strategic Project Management Made Simple is the first book to couple a step-by-step process with an interactive thinking tool that takes a strategic approach to designing projects and action initiatives. Strategic Project Management Made Simple builds a solid platform upon four critical questions that are vital for teams to intelligently answer in order to create their own strong, strategic foundation. These questions are: 1. What are we trying to accomplish and why? 2. How will we measure success? 3. What other conditions must exist? 4. How do we get there? This fresh approach begins with clearly understanding the what and why of a project - comprehending the bigger picture goals that are often given only lip service or cursory reviews. The second and third questions clarify success measures and identify the risky assumptions that can later cause pain if not spotted early. The how questions - what are the activities, budgets, and schedules - comes last in our four-question system. By contrast, most project approaches prematurely concentrate on the how without first adequately addressing the three other questions. These four questions guide readers into fleshing out a simple, yet sophisticated, mental workbench called "the Logical Framework" - a Systems Thinking paradigm that lays out one's own project strategy in an easily accessible, interactive 4x4 matrix. The inclusion of memorable features and concepts (four critical questions, LogFrame matrix, If-then thinking, and Implementation Equation) make this book unique.

Taking a staff-led approach, this book helps libraries of all types create their own meaningful and authentic strategic plans while demystifying a process that can bring many benefits to the organization. With dwindling budgets to pay for consultants and a growing interest in collaboration across the organization, libraries are increasingly taking a do-it-yourself approach to strategic planning. This book takes a step-by-step approach to grassroots strategic planning for libraries of all types. The authors, who led a successful strategic planning process at their own library, provide practical advice and detailed information to guide library personnel through their own process. Topics include aligning with institutional and community values, creating vision and mission statements, researching stakeholder needs, conducting environmental scans, collaborative drafting of the plan, communication strategies, and implementation and assessment of the plan. Each chapter helps librarians create a strategic plan for a broad spectrum of libraries, including K–12, post-secondary, public, and special libraries. A unique feature of the book is its emphasis on the ways in which different library types can collaborate to meet shared goals. This book is a one-stop-shop, providing everything library staff will need to create a strategic plan without searching for additional sources.

Projects have become the de facto method of implementing business strategy and operations. As such, understanding how projects relate to business strategy and managing projects strategically is increasingly important to effective and efficient business management This book is designed as a short and concise treatise on how to go about doing that. The authors start by figuring out how the project relates to the rest of the business and environment and what separates it from other projects and functions. They go on to discuss how you can use principles of strategic management to better organize and manage the various projects you may be dealing with on a daily basis so that they are strategic in nature. In essence, this book details how to approach answering the important strategic questions in project management like—“Why is the project being implemented? How does the project relate to the major strategic goals of the organization? How do we accomplish the performance goals for the project so that they help achieve the major strategic goals of the organization?”