Project-related objectives
Frequently, you may come up with ideas for projects that you believe will generate important strategic value for your organization.
For example, suppose you're a manager in the IT department and you propose developing a new database that will enable the company to acquire and analyze more comprehensive and accurate information about customers' preferences and purchasing activities. In your mind, the project's objective is clear: to improve knowledge of customer preferences so as to serve them more profitably. But other managers may have additional objectives in mind for the project—such as extracting customer information more quickly than before, obtaining customer reports in new formats, and so forth. If you try to satisfy all these objectives, the project scope may soon balloon to impossible proportions. Result? Resources end up getting spread too thin, and the project fails.
To think strategically in such situations, you need to clarify the strategic priority that the project is intended to serve.
Here are some questions that can help you ensure that your project supports strategic objectives and balances the needs of various stakeholders with higher-level strategy:
- What is the perceived strategic need that this project is intended to satisfy?
- Who has a stake in the solution or outcome?
- How do the various stakeholders' goals for the project differ? Do their goals align with the higher-level strategic goals we're trying to achieve through this project?
- Are there other projects that would help us better satisfy the strategic need we've identified? If so, what are they? And how do they compare with the current proposed project—in terms of cost, feasibility, and so forth?