Connecting Project & Strategy Management through Integrated Governance - Knowledge

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

On the 14th November, the APM Governance Interest Network hosted the second in a series of events aimed at emboldening PMO / P3 Professionals to step into the gap between strategy and delivery.

This session presented the Business Integrated Governance Body of Knowledge from a PMO / P3 perspective - covering the key concepts, principles and components to build an operation that connects from purpose to vision to strategy and delivery - and back again.

Background

Change projects and programmes come in all shapes and sizes. From operational projects to support business operation, to the strategic that programme that supports objectives in a change portfolio. There is a widely held misconception that strategy delivery is only about change, and that all we need is a strategic change programme and we are covered. Wrong on both counts. Our business strategy relies on:

Business Performance. Our strategic goals CANNOT be met unless the business operates and generates results.
Product Development. If our product portfolio isn't / doesn't become what customers want - we will not achieve our goals
Strategic Change - while we need operational change to maintain BAU performance - there are cross functional strategic initiatives to develop reputation, operational excellence and culture goals.

So - strategy delivery is much more than just change. We need to develop and exploit our products (physical and service to generate value), and our business operation (grow and perform). The strategic objectives related to value and business performance typically are the focus for leadership time, resources and funds.

Therefore - our change portfolio does clearly not contain all the strategic objectives we need to achieve to meet our business purpose, AND it has to compete for leadership time, resources and funds with value creation and operational entities. There are also dependencies between portfolio items and elements of value creation and / or BAU / Product development.

At the APM PMO conference in June '24 we asked the question - do attendees knows who supports the connection of strategy to delivery across the organisation. Across c. 100 PMO professionals - no one knew. Please see the event report here.

The implication is that in addition to not thinking of strategy as an integration of multiple strategic facets including change, our organisations are literally not supporting integrated strategic governance.

The Story So Far

In our first event in this series, we presented evidence that strategy to delivery does not work well for many organisations. We offered a framework for the reasons why not, and we will have engaged a significant group of 360 P3 professionals in the pains of strategy delivery - and we will understand the drivers to make strategy delivery improvements.

We addressed 5 question areas related to strategy delivery, and for each question, we received dozens and dozens of responses. The event report, including links to recordings, slides and response analysis can be found here. The responses very much reflected previous sessions which have delivered this kind of conclusion.

However, for a P3O to step into the broader realm of supporting strategy delivery, not just project delivery, there needs to be infrastructure to support that. In the same way the P3O will have built capability to operate P3 (governance framework, reporting, process / roles, people competence, tools...) the same job needs doing for strategy delivery.

Event Specifics

The second session in our series presented the building blocks for strategy delivery that an aspiring and empowered P3O will need to build in order to bring the order of a well-oiled change portfolio to the overall business portfolio.

We covered:

Strategy Delivery is vital for existence, and we are not good at it.
Recap our view of the strategic process, that it is complex and difficult (will be shared in advance to attendees)
A summary / analysis of the (550+) points raised in strategy delivery gathered at the last event
Recap the Introduction to Business Integrated Governance
BIG Principles - the key underpinnings of Business Integrated Governance - do we concur? - please find a recording which introduces the principles here.
What is the Body of Knowledge - and where to find it - e.g. Key Concepts and Components

Establishing Readiness (this is covered in depth at the next session)
Example 1 - Establishing a Portfolio Direction Group using BIG content
Example 2 - Defining the governance and accountability model for a cross government change portfolio

Questions Raised

Questions were taken - and answered - from over 230 engaged attendees over the course of the session, which delved into Accountability, Assurance, Case Building, Governance, Implementation, Information, Leadership, Organisation, Prioritisation and Strategic Process. Click on the image below to open the PDF details.

Who Would Find This Useful?

The proposition in the presentation is that our organisations are not good with strategy delivery (evidenced), there is little infrastructure to enable the integrated governance needed (also evidenced), and we don't support the process of delivering strategy with dedicated resources (evidenced).

Is it that all our organisations are doing so well we don't need business strategy?
Are our silos so strong that cross functional strategy delivery is just nigh on impossible?
Do our directors not recognise the strategy delivery issue?
Is there no perceived solution, or is it perceived to be impossible?

Who will be your protagonists in change?

- 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?

As mentioned, this event is the first in a series of 3. The event series is introduced here.

The 3rd session will cover helping people start the conversation internally:

triggers to do something
clarification of current state
building a picture to engage people

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