Strategy-AI
×

Why Strategic Projects Don't Change

Grover Jackson
14 September 2021 10 min read

Strategies change due to internal and external pressures... strategic projects, actions and KPIs don't change, they adapt to the real change happening around and inside your business. As obvious as this statement is, it's an important fact to remember when your work is focused on strategic projects.

This is important for team leads and managers (project and product) to keep in mind, as your world is heavily driven by your projects. If you are focused on your projects, actions and KPIs, then you are stuck in the metaphor of "the tail wagging the dog".

As a lead or manager, every decision you need to make during your projects journey to delivery, needs to go back to why this decision needs to be made. Your thinking needs to shift from "is this piece of work I'm faced with making a decision on, something that fits into the project", to "will this piece of work, actually make an impact on the business factors that made this project strategic"?

As a real-world example. If your strategic project is to integrate with a platform and extract reporting data, say salesforce, but the reason this is a strategic project is because your new target market of the mining sector exclusively uses salesforce, then the question of "should we pull through report XYZ from salesforce?" isn't answered by, "it's a common report used in salesforce". Instead, it's answered by reflecting on "is this report used by the mining sector?" If the answer is No, then the fact the original answer met the requirements of integrating and extract reporting data from salesforce is irrelevant. The relevant aspect is the driving factor on your business, not the action... data the mining sectors wants, not data from saleforce. Upon a deeper reflection, it's possible you will actually discover the data the mining sector needs isn't actually in salesforce, and it's somewhere else.

This final factor that the entire strategic project maybe the wrong action to take can only be assessed and mitigated if, you consider your full business strategy when you are faced with a decision to make. This is where Strategy-AI fully integrates with the major project and task management systems to bring your strategy front and center while making your key project decisions. Spot work that is strategically misaligned earlier, deprioritise work and avoid the costs and expenses that aren't going to get you to market.

Get in touch with us