Connecting Project & Strategy Management through Integrated Governance - Ability

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

On the 12th December, the APM Governance Interest Network hosted the third in a series of events aimed at enabling PMO / P3 Professionals to step into the gap between strategy and delivery.

Following on from the first 2 sessions, (Awareness and Knowledge) this session provided an hour long workshop for people to work through how to get improving Strategy Delivery using Business Integrated Governance onto an executive sponsor agenda.

This session can be re run as a short-sharp briefing, or a half day workshop.

Background

In today’s fast-evolving business landscape, delivering strategy successfully relies on integrating projects with operational and product management teams. Yet, no clear framework exists for this, leaving many project, programme, and portfolio (P3) professionals struggling to engage senior leadership in balancing ongoing operations with value creation and change.

Without an integrated approach, organisations face challenges with strategic alignment, accountability, managing dependencies, prioritising initiatives, and overseeing resources and funding effectively.

The first two sessions in the series established:

A worrying set of issues related to strategy delivery that attendees faced. These were not related to project / programme delivery, but more related to the mechanisms around strategy delivery themselves - which, in many cases, do not exist or are ad hoc.
Business Integrated Governance as a possible framework - free to APM Members - that change protagonists could use to address strategy delivery issues.
This interactive workshop introduced Business Integrated Governance (BIG), a framework to help elevate strategy delivery to the executive level. It combines presentations and practical sessions to provide actionable tools that support your organisation’s strategic goals.

Trigger Moments

There are many scenarios that can benefit from the application of BIG Key Concepts, Principles and Components. The BIG Body of Knowledge (BoK) offers some examples, and more detail is offered in The BIG Rationale.

Attendees at the session outlined some of their pain areas for which we had a BIG response:

Fragmented Governance - Governance is fragmented or absent across the business.
Engaging Others in Strategy - Engagement is needed to deliver strategic objectives.
Setting Up Governance - The organization is starting from scratch and wants to do it right.
Parochial Views on Strategy - Strategy is seen narrowly, with a focus on bonuses.
Common Strategic Issues - Vision is unclear; lack of understanding, too many contributors, and silo working.
Transparency Concern - Staff are frustrated by a lack of transparency.
Excessive Governance - Too much governance is delaying project delivery.
Engagement in Strategy Delivery - Need better engagement for strategy delivery.
Barriers in Programmes - Barriers to strategy exist, with ineffective decision-making.
Clarifying Strategy - What does strategy mean at the operational level?
Ignored/Mixed Governance - Governance is ignored or inconsistent.
Integrated Governance Across Programmes - An opportunity exists to integrate governance across three programmes.
Outdated Rules - Old rules constrain future progress.

What are yours?

The group identified potential protagonists and sponsors, including Exec Board, CEO / Director General, COO / Head of Ops, Department Heads. Plus anyone who holds the purse strings! BIG Beneficiaries are explored in the BIG BoK Appendix

Who are yours?

Building Consensus and Commitment

Tabling initial conversations with fellow protagonists or a potential sponsor enables the ball to start rolling.

A good first step is to develop stakeholder profiles in terms of the pains each stakeholder faces and the gains they might expect. This information can be used to build material for engagement and ot start the right conversations.

There are two schools of thought with respect to getting engagement - to identify a burning platform or to highlight a possible paradise. It is easier to gather information on a burning platform - as it exists - but the process may be disagreeable. It may feel more positive to paint a rosy picture - but establishing credibility at an early stage (with limited time available to status / option-eer) may be difficult.

This section split the Groups into 2 sets

Set 1 introduced attendees to the "Pains" and the "Solution" Canvasses from the BIG Services Taxonomy - which engaged the audience to develop their perception of strategy pains using some structured headings
Set 2 introduced attendees to the BIG Readiness Model - which started to walk the audience through principles-based challenge statements against which they could rate their organisation.
Both sets started to discuss the development of current situation to build momentum for change.

What will be the best engagements methods for your situation?

Vision, Outline Business Case and Roadmap

At some point, key stakeholders and a possible initiative sponsor will need to give credence to the BIG initiative, but they will want to see a solution outline. Assuming there is consensus to do 'something' - what might that be? What might the value be? What might the sequence and decision process look like to develop it and extract the value?

This session offered an example "First Steps" engagement which explained:

reliance on a key stakeholder to frame the problem and set up discussions with executive colleagues
the importance of preparation for interviews / meetings
the necessity to capture well and agree points raised with each senior interviewee
using the BIG Components to categorise playback and pains, and to build the picture of future state
translating implications out of "BIG Speak" and back into plain business language for executive consumption

Further content is available in the BIG Body of Knowledge for development of outline Vision and Roadmap to enable "Phase 1", and discuss Outline Business Case and Building a BIG Capability.

What will your next steps be?

Who should attend?

- PMO Leaders who are struggling to support strategic projects and programmes

- PMO Directors to cannot see how strategy is driving change or how projects are enabling strategy

- Governance Professionals who want to see effective decision making, application of policy and process to strategy delivery

- Operations and finance directors who want to see funds / resources deployed in line with strategic priorities

- Strategic leadership who want to see effective strategy delivery

- More stakeholder profiles here

What next?

We recommend developing outputs from the session as the basis to engage your organisation to improve strategy delivery.

You may find further resources within our Strategic Themes - which outline a number of perspectives stakeholders have - from CEO / Strategy Team to the Corporate Governance Team, Product Groups and P3O. These are topics which may point at specific Blogs - all of which may help engaging stakeholders understand their current state and way forwards.

Can you establish:

Trigger Moments - do you have a burning platform or a vision of paradise which will engage your colleagues to start a BIG Journey? Lets discuss!
How to build consensus on current state, and agree to do "something" - lets go through your pains and think about the relevant solution components to respond to them with
Vision - what would a simple illustration of this look like - lets mock up an example you can use
Roadmap - lets leverage the BIG BoK and mock up an example you can use

Deepteam offers support for this Early Engagement - To help a sponsor define and build a case. Includes training and workshops.

There after, can can support organisations with:

Building Enablers - This activity provides the central capabilities underpinning integrated governance, and includes design / build of business support, information technology, governance framework and accountability maps.
Culture Change - Making change stick and sustainable needs adoption readiness, adoption support, training and sustainment (support) planning.

Please Contact us if you would like to have a conversation.

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