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Pillar #1: Strategic Delivery Capability

1.0 Setting the Stage

The profession of project management has been changing and fast. This is a different world than the one that has driven the early days of the birth of this discipline. When the authors first came up with the idea behind this book, their driver was to think about and illustrate the next iteration of this profession, which could take us through the remainder of the decade. The more closely we reviewed this ambition and worked with many of the companies around the globe to pulse their views of the future of work, the more we realized that project management is truly at an inflection point and that it is finally ready to be tackled from a wider ecosystem that encompasses the culture, business value, and the sharper focus on co-creating solutions with customers and other stakeholders. The 10 pillars we selected as the foundation for this book cover this wider ecosystem. They allow us to look at where projects are strategically poised to create a distinct way of working into the future.

As we start tackling the 10 pillars, we are reminded that predicting the next generation of project management is a complex topic. Strategy is hard and to find the patterns that connect the pillars to how organizations excel in working in the future is not an exact science anymore. The chaos that the world encounters that combines a multitude of attributes of uncertainty is immense. It is finally resting upon the project managers of the future to take on the leading role of change making that we had been predicting over the past years. The system-wide mindset that these future leaders will bring has reached the right moment of being highly valued. It is our hope that this book and its pillars serve as a critical guidepost that the organizations of the future would follow in driving their focus, investing in the right skills, in recreating how their work is done, and deciding on what data truly matters.

With the increasing vast demands for complex infrastructure programs, green energy, and the number of organizations that are committing to ambitious goals on their journey to climate neutrality, and to possibly achieving net zero emissions by 2050 while they hit some intermediate targets by 2030, the role of strategic projects that are effectively delivered will only multiply. Based on industry trends, the authors' experiences, and the multiple studies that still indicate the large gap between envisioned goals and the executed outcomes, this book is focusing on the excellence practices that will enhance the opportunities for this world to see what project management principles could help us achieve.

Before getting into some of the background and barriers behind the first pillar that sets the tone for the set of critical shifts we see into the next generation of project management, namely project management being a true strategic competency, let us start with one of the Excellence in Action sections that support the move in that direction. Throughout the book, we will demonstrate the next generation trending we see around the selected guiding 10 pillars with examples of world class organizations that have managed to show great evidence of excellence in their operations, nicely coupled with the maturing of the principles of project management.

In this first one, a dedicated professional to driving and changing the project management profession has gone through a clear maturity path in her leading strategic work with the Mayo Clinic. As a certified Portfolio Management Professional by the Project Management Institute (PMI), she has tackled the critical transformation objectives required to get project management to a strategic competency via orchestrating a set of interconnected change initiatives as part of her portfolio responsibility.

Excellence in Action: Strategy Management Services, Mayo Clinic1

One thing that is certain in all aspects of our lives is that "things will change." Regardless of how much planning, preparation, and project management we do; change will continue to occur in both expected and often very unexpected ways. While this is evident in our professional and personal lives, it's also very relevant to the project management profession as well.

Past, Present, and Future

Many of us who have been involved in project management for many years, or many decades as in my case, may remember the days when project management wasn't really "a thing" and it definitely was not a career to be aspired to. People typically got assigned to "get something done" and would use whatever means they could to get people together, figure it out, and use "project heroics" to accomplish it. These early days of basic project management techniques had several successes, but more than likely ended in failures with long project timelines, the need for additional resources, and a variety of unanticipated surprises.

Fortunately, some really smart people figured that there had to be better ways of doing projects and created a series of methodologies, standards, and tools and templates. This began the era of formalized project management when organizations, such as the Project Management Institute (PMI), became known for sharing their knowledge, providing education, certifying practitioners, and establishing the project management profession.

This was particularly important as projects were becoming larger, more complex, and more costly. Project management gained worldwide recognition and adoption as the rate of project success increased and organizations realized the necessity and value of project management. During this time, hundreds of thousands of people became certified Project Management Offices (PMOs) were formed, and the term project management became part of standard business terminology.

As the years passed by and things continue to change there is a need for project management to adapt again as we enter "The Next Generation." This iteration has an increase in technology, business agility, and accelerated deliverables that is requiring project management approaches to pivot and adapt to meet the new needs and challenges for our organizations more quickly than ever before. As Dr. Kerzner has noted, "More project managers are expected to manage strategic projects rather than just traditional or operational projects." With this occurring over the past few years, it was time to introduce this next generation within my organization and move forward in establishing "Strategy Management Services" (SMS) (Figure 1-1).

After establishing and leading the Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPMO) at my organization for 10 years, it was time to move onto the next level, and fortunately I had the opportunity to pursue my SMS vision by taking a new position within a large, innovative department in my organization. In this role, I've been empowered to create the next generation of project management with an established PMO team that was needing a new direction. While it took a few months to formulate, reorganize, and introduce the new approaches; after only two years we are now a well-established high-performing team, have strong business partnerships, and are fully recognized as SMS.

Spectrum of Strategy Management Services

The vision of SMS began with the desire to move beyond the historical perspectives related to project management and a PMO by fully recognizing the critical importance of focusing on Strategic Execution and Value Delivery. While many of the services provided by SMS are based on the foundation provided by project management, business analysis, change management, and other standards, SMS recognizes that the ultimate goal is to deliver the value directed by the strategic vision of the organization.

Figure 1-1 PPM Past, Present, and Future

Figure 1-2 Strategy Management Services

Although there are dozens of books on strategic planning and execution, very few actually bring all the pieces together. Most of us fully realize that all the best strategic planning in the world gets you nowhere if you can't execute it successfully. The SMS "full spectrum of strategic services" is focused on using a logical approach, recognizing the interrelationships across the roles, and beginning with strategy and ending with successful results. This model allows all project stakeholders to recognize their specific roles and clearly understand how all phases need to work together to get the desired outcomes.

The stages of the SMS model are defined as follows (Figure 1-2):

• 01 - Develop Strategy. Partner with business areas to develop approaches to deliver the strategic goals and objectives.
• 02 - Architect Changes. Assess business and system capabilities to determine competencies, weaknesses, and gaps to highlight changes needed.
• 03 - Plan Initiatives. Create plans to address business needs by indicating project goals, leaders, resources, costs, schedule, metrics, and other attributes.
• 04 - Execute Solutions. Successfully deliver business solutions through a multi-disciplinary team comprised of skilled resources committed to achieving business needs.
• 05 - Measure Success. Provide tangible and visible measures of progress toward meeting business goals and objectives.

Project management has typically focused heavily on the model's stages 3 and 4....