The effectiveness of alignment as a metric is limited because not all strategic objectives have equal importance.

Alignment of Strategies is Meaningless

Organizations don’t exist simply to exist. Every decision made within the organization should be evaluated based on its ability to achieve prioritized strategic objectives. This means that before considering any improvement initiatives, such as programs or projects, the organization must first determine how it aligns with its overall strategy.

This also includes determining the metrics and indicators that will allow for a fair assessment of its impact. As Tilley (1963) stated, “strategy is a representation of the organization’s goals and aspirations. Both the attainment of goals and growth as an organization are critical for successful strategy implementation.” This becomes increasingly relevant when considering that in 2020, only 52% of organizations achieved at least two-thirds of their strategic objectives.

Therefore, as Stephen Jenner says, “what’s important is not the alignment of strategy, but rather its ability to bring value”, particularly in terms of realizing benefits. Benefits are quantifiable improvements that help achieve one or more strategic objectives. It’s crucial for the strategy to be clearly defined so that these benefits can be consistently measured.

To put it simply, contribution refers to the role or impact of an individual or element in producing an outcome or facilitating progress. On the other hand, alignment refers to the arrangement in a straight line or proper relative positions (Oxford Concise English Dictionary 1999). Hence, determining the impact of each proposed spending within a portfolio on achieving strategic objectives is central to effective benefits management.

The saying “you can do anything but not everything” holds true in strategy implementation. Many organizations allocate resources, such as personnel, funding, equipment, materials, technology, property, and other essentials, on a large scale without having a clear understanding of their strategic priorities. Despite an organizational strategy being a crucial factor in determining the organization’s future in an evolving digital economy, if the organization is unable to achieve its strategic objectives, the strategy becomes ineffective and the organization’s purpose remains unachieved.

The purpose of strategy contribution should be to advance the organization and its business model toward its desired outcomes, such as growth or transformation. On the other hand, relying solely on strategy alignment is unlikely to bring about these results or deliver the desired benefits, and may even result in digital disruption, especially when resources are mainly focused on maintaining the daily operations of the business. For instance, Kodak failed to capitalize on the potential of digital photography, a technology it invented in 1975.

Boldly going nowhere

According to researcher Marcus Buckingham, “ordinary organizations play checkers while exceptional ones play chess.” In checkers, all pieces are identical and interchangeable. However, in order to win at chess, you must understand the strengths and weaknesses of each piece and why each one is unique. This means that strategy contribution should lead to the proper allocation of funds to various spending proposals, both in progress and planned, in order to reflect the priority and importance of the organization’s strategic objectives.

Merely mentioning “strategy alignment,” as is common among many organizations, particularly in program and project business cases, is not sufficient. Stephen Jenner suggests that a spending proposal can easily be aligned with any strategic objective without specific measures and metrics. Alignment alone is not a reliable indicator as not all strategic objectives carry equal weight. It is important to prioritize and rank the strategic objectives to show which are the most important.

Strategy contribution is vital because the purpose of portfolio and benefits management is to enable the accomplishment of strategic objectives, not just alignment. A portfolio may seem aligned to a certain cause by expressing belief in it and discussing it, but without taking any actual actions. In other words, “alignment” is a misleading term in performance management that leads to inadequate strategy implementation. To be comprehensive, the business case should include a benefits map and benefit profile that clearly explain how the proposed spending will contribute to the organization’s strategy and performance.

The major flaw in portfolio management is the widespread “checklist” approach to strategy alignment, which gives organizations a false sense of measuring the portfolio’s strategy contribution. This bureaucratic and externally imposed approach, also known as “tick-box culture,” creates a gap between official perception and actual outcomes and results. Too often, strategy alignment is used as a default excuse when the benefits of a specific idea cannot be clearly expressed. Essentially, strategy alignment is frequently cited as the reason why the benefits cannot be communicated more effectively.

This is the way!

According to the Praxis Framework, portfolio management involves the choice, classification, ranking, and improvement of an organization’s programs and projects to align with its goals and available resources for delivering benefits. A comprehensive portfolio and benefits framework should be established by every organization to provide a uniform and effective method for estimating the expected strategy impact from all work proposed for the portfolio. Mature organizations align their portfolio categories with the benefit categories defined in the benefits framework, which ensures the portfolio and benefit categories match and facilitates benefits identification and quantification. This also creates a fair environment for comparing business case options, evaluating investment opportunities, and prioritizing the portfolio, especially when optimizing the portfolio for maximum strategy contribution.

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Your chances of making the needed adjustments will increase if you follow these recommended policies and processes. The ability to objectively evaluate the culture of your company is also important.

Given the title, They sincerely ask the readers’ indulgence in stating that most organizations have some sort of written policy and procedure. The way policies and procedures are applied differ greatly between organizations. Making a positive organizational culture is an important aspect that is usually overlooked or underestimated. The influence of the current organizational culture and the transition to the culture needed to embed the intended change outcomes must be openly and transparently discussed in order to achieve this.

You have worked with organizations that are attempting to manage organizational change and will continue to do so. Most people are so afraid that they choose to ignore “the elephant in the room.” That is to say, everyone is aware that changing the current organizational culture will take discussion, agreement, and conviction. However, it is usually overlooked as people become preoccupied with “doing stuff.” This element of organizational culture has the potential to permeate all levels and functions of the organization. A misaligned organizational culture with the goals of the change program cannot be addressed by any policy or procedure and should not be.

It is nearly impossible to create policies and procedures that are 100% error-free. The organization must put up its best effort in regard to policy and processes. This is enhanced by an organizational culture that offers the necessary attitudes and behaviors for applying not just the letter but also the spirit of the policy and procedure.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of best-effort policy and procedure with the appropriate organizational culture, nor should it be minimized by “getting stuff done.” Without the proper mindset and behavior, policy and procedure are a substantial, if not the most important, factor in bringing about successful and efficient organizational change.

The types of knowledge supporting organizational change management, project management, and IT infrastructure are well-established and well-documented. Why are the ethical standards indicated in these and other bodies of knowledge not being upheld with knowledge, rigor, and conviction? They think organizational culture has a big influence. Here is one instance. Any organizational change must start with timely, accurate, consistent, and transparent reporting. The majority of organizations who are working on changes or other projects will claim that they have policies and procedures in place that address status reporting. The “watermelon reporting” issue will almost probably cause problems for these same organizations. What I mean by “watermelon reporting” is that they use a customized traffic light system or RAG to show what was planned against what was achieved. Everything green on the outside but red on the inside is called “watermelon reporting.” How often are reporting policies and procedures followed? The organizational culture and a deficiency in consequence management are directly responsible for the non-application or incorrect application.

Every organization is unique, whether in terms of its objectives, size, available products, or services. Due to the fact that each individual within any organization is a unique individual, they are all very different. There are a few basic areas that every organization can use, but they will need to be customized to suit best the organization’s resources and the change being implemented. Keeping with recognized excellent practices as they are is a powerful recommendation for any change management. Only differ from these when there is a very good reason, and then document the change’s need and expected benefit. Another suggestion is to set up a time for “front-end loading” at the beginning of any change program. This involves putting as many of the resources needed for success in place from the start. A strong risk and issue status is a key artifact for any written change policy and process if having everything in place is not possible.

Recommendations for policy, procedure, and application

From the Plan of Record (POR) through the different plan iterations and final delivery and approval of the commissioning Business Case, all of these should be documented and used to support the project planning process.

• Is there a realistic business case supporting the implementation of the change? Are changes to the initial Business Case under-documented version control as work progresses? This can be needed if it is decided to stop the project or program due to a change in circumstances.
• Existing definitions of the terms “policy,” “procedure,” “practice,” and “process” and how they should be used?
• Are there established, supported, and documented methods for using good practices? For example, what project management strategy should be used? Should the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) be used?
• Is the AGILE Manifesto and SCRUM Guide to be followed, and is there agreement on what this means for application?

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Making a digital strategy is overly prioritized by many firms as a commercial need. You don’t need a digital strategy, according to (Nieto-Rodriguez & Speculand, 2021). It’s important to understand the difference if you want to develop a plan for a developing digital economy. When offering your organization’s value proposition, strategy is the conscious decision to “perform activities differently or to execute various activities, better than market competitors” (Porter, 1996). The most important thing to realize is that strategy is all about “choice.”

Unfortunately, organizations frequently make poor decisions while planning to adapt to the current state of the digital infrastructure. They fail to take into account the possibility that by the time they finish the digital transition to the current environment, the technological environment would have completely changed. Therefore, technologically astute CEOs understand that technology is a moving target and start to modify their company and business model to fit the future infrastructure. A moving target must be led if you want to hit it, according to any quarterback, football player, or hockey player. Aim where the target will be rather than where it is now (Kane et al., 2020).

Why it matters?

According to McGrath (2019), changes in the business environment, or “inflection points,” can either result in new, entrepreneurial opportunities (like those offered by Amazon and Netflix), or they can have disastrous effects (e.g. Blockbuster and Toys R Us). According to former Intel CEO Andy Grove, an inflection point is the “moment when the fundamentals of business are going to shift” (Nieto-Rodriguez & Speculand, 2021).

Only those executives who can “see around corners”—more specifically, recognize disruptive inflection moments before they occur—are in a position to succeed (McGrath, 2019). Change can either provide an opportunity to achieve new heights or signal the start of the end. For instance, the market leader in aerospace, Airbus, is testing hydrogen combustion technology to produce the first commercial aircraft with zero emissions by 2035. In contrast to its competitors, Airbus sees the change as an opportunity to “lead a changing target,” while for others, the inflection point may signal the beginning of the end with decreasing market share.

Our business and society are still being digitally disrupted at an unprecedented rate thanks to new technology. Organizations must create a future where they invest in the knowledge and creativity of their workforce if they want to survive. In the future, humans will have the power to fully utilize new technology to create platforms that support or facilitate the development of novel, cutting-edge goods, and services (Deloitte, 2017). Platforms serve as the structural basis on which businesses can provide customers with complementary technological products and services.

Amazon is a prime example of the new type of ambidextrous business that is always looking for the most creative business concepts. It focuses to meet the requirements of its customers even before they are aware that they have them, such as free shipping. Organizational ambidexterity is the capacity of an organization to manage its operations now while creating new methods to meet the shifting demands of tomorrow (Lerner & Zieris 2019).

Today, a strategy must include carefully coordinated decisions regarding the business model with the greatest potential for value creation, the competitive position that captures the greatest amount of value, and the implementation processes that continuously adapt to the changing technology while developing the capabilities needed to realize value over the long term (Collis, 2021). Because of this, according to Blain (2021), “the rapid pace of how we live and work today is driving incremental and radical change in business and is becoming the new normal.”

While some companies are able to keep up with this rapid change, many others are falling behind. Worldwide, the rate of change is catching companies off guard. It’s no longer a question of if and when to transform businesses in order to get ready for a digital future; it’s rather a matter of how quickly to convert (Blain, 2021).

“The pace of change has never been this quick, and it will never be this slow again,” once declared Canadian President Justin Trudeau. There is something great about technology, especially in a digital setting. It modifies every aspect!

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Increase project success using the tried-and-true methods of quality and ongoing development.

This article can be quite short. If you will, a lean one. Because it combines the effectiveness of the Lean methodology with the quality management techniques of Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma is useful to project managers.

By removing waste (Lean) and using statistics and data to identify and remove any aspect of a process that doesn’t contribute to the best result, Lean Six Sigma progressively improves the output quality of a process (Six Sigma). Lean Six Sigma allows you to identify the project’s most valuable components, resulting in optimal efficiency.

That basically sums everything up. However, we won’t stop there. What exactly about Lean Six Sigma ensures the success of every project? In order to respond to this inquiry, we would want to provide an overview of Lean Six Sigma before discussing one of its most popular tools: DMAIC.

What is Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma is a potent management technique that emphasizes ongoing development. It consists of Lean (which focuses on improving productivity and eliminating waste from a process) and Six Sigma (which focuses on effectiveness and the removal of errors). Lean Six Sigma has a number of belts, usually known as levels. They start at Yellow Belt and go all the way up to Black Belt, much as in martial arts.

Lean Six Sigma was created by well-known corporations like Motorola and Toyota and has since spread to become a widely used global methodology in the manufacturing, industrial, and public service sectors. Lean Six Sigma has been recognized with significant improvements to business performance and processes throughout the years.

Lean Six Sigma is globally applicable and has the ability to help businesses in all areas, despite being particularly well-liked in certain.

What is DMAIC?

Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control is referred to as DMAIC. For the improvement of processes, Lean Six Sigma uses a systematic and tested methodology. Every stage of the DMAIC cycle has its own tools and affects the outcome in some way. DMAIC assists businesses in locating the main causes of errors, removing them, and thus improving process quality overall.

The formula Y=f(x) must be kept in mind constantly while using DMAIC and Lean Six Sigma projects in general. According to this mathematical formula, the result of a process, Y, is the sum of several variables, the x’s. So, if you are aware of the Y, you are constantly aware of what the result of a particular phase must be.

Any variable, including order volume, workspace separation, and date, can be used as the x. These all may have an effect on Y. To ascertain which of the x’s has the most influence, DMAIC uses statistics and data. Following the completion of this step, we may utilize one of the many tools in our toolbox to optimize this variable in a measurable way and improve the quality of the overall process.

Imagine going through each step of a process utilizing tried-and-true tools while using a strategy like DMAIC. You may be confident that the proper problem is being addressed since data and statistics are being used. Results are virtually assured by the method’s structure! DMAIC is thus one of the ways Lean Six Sigma may help project managers.

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New Business Resilience Fundamentals course and certification

The level of change and business risk in the world is unprecedented in recent generations. While some businesses freeze and fail, others improve, grow, and even succeed. Resilience makes a difference.

It is more important than ever for organizations to incorporate resilience into their routine operations in the increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) business world.

The ability to thrive in emergency situations is now crucial as crises become more frequent. Our concept of resilience has transformed as a result of the pandemic. Before Covid, it mostly focused on business continuity and IT disaster recovery.

One description of a resilient business is one that can not only tolerate shocks and disruptions in the business environment but also adapt to them and benefit from them.

BUSINESS RESILIENCE – A practical guide to sustained progress delivered at pace

The Business Resilience Framework is explained to readers and organizations in this new guide. For organizations that want to achieve sustained progress, it consists of five domains: Principles, Roles, Resilience Foundations, PACE Culture, and Progress Cycle. These five domains serve as the foundation for implementing business resilience at pace.

It’s a helpful manual for enhancing current procedures and increasing organizations’ resilience by capitalizing on what the company already performs well. It outlines how managers should regularly assess their business environment and change their goals based on the level of disruption, from gradual innovation and improvement in good economic times to focus on a specific issue during a crisis.

The advice is intended to assist organizations in moving forward rather than simply recovering after a significant disruption.

This guide provides the framework that was missing, according to a speaker at a resilience conference in 2021: “What is missing is not more great ideas, but a practical framework within which to implement them.”

“Business Resilience and sustainability are certainly hot topics and the new role of Chief Resilience Officer has emerged; this certification provides a new dimension for leaders and professionals to deliver more customer value and a competitive edge in today’s and tomorrow’s VUCA conditions, building on existing best practice to deliver a step-change in resilience throughout the organization.” David Roberts, CEO & Chief Resilience Officer, Resilience Professionals

Business Resilience Fundamentals

APMG has created a 3-day Business Resilience Fundamentals training and certification in collaboration with the authors of the book. The training creates a range of supportive tools to develop and improve organizational resilience as well as guide participants through the application and adaptation of the Business Resilience Framework.

“Businesses spend a lot of time and money on business interruption and disaster recovery plans for their IT systems This guidance expands that concept to cover the whole organization so when your next black swan arrives you are far better prepared to deal with it. Following the advice in this guidance are good business practice and excellent corporate risk management.” Richard Pharro, CEO, APMG International

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What differentiates a Framework from a Body of Knowledge?

There are many bodies of knowledge, approaches, standards, and, more recently, frameworks available for project, program, and portfolio (P3M) management. But what do these identifying details practice classifications mean?

The short answer is that none of these publications can be completely explained, although certain general principles apply:

Body of Knowledge:

A body of knowledge (BoK) often only covers one of those three and explains the components that make up the disciplines of project, program, and portfolio management. Functions include things like stakeholder management, risk management, planning, and scope management. It is acknowledged that the profession, which consists of academics and practitioners, holds the entire corpus of knowledge. Publications on the body of knowledge are just introductions to that wealth of information and a place to start understanding its depth and breadth. A methodology must be used to apply the different functions described in a body of knowledge.

Examples include those created by the Project Management Institute and the Association for Project Management (APM) (PMI).

Methodology:

A methodology controls the creation, execution, and completion of a project or program. It is process-based and nearly always based on a lifecycle. The organizational roles that direct the processes and the supporting documentation are often defined in these publications. To put a methodology into practice, you must be able to comprehend the content within a body of knowledge.

Examples come from the Agile Business Consortium and Axelos, respectively, and are PRINCE2 and Agile Project Management.

Standards:

There are some different ways that standards can be produced by organizations like the International Standards Organization (ISO). They may include some of the methods and body of knowledge, but they are usually far less in-depth than those publications. Although it is tempting to believe that “standards”—such as ISO 9000 for quality or ISO 14000 for environmental management—can be used to evaluate or even accredit an organization, P3M has not yet done so. Something becomes a standard not because of its use or content, but because it is published by a standards organization (or occasionally by a government).

Examples are BS6079 from the British Standards Institute and ISO21500 from the ISO (BSI). Additionally, the American National Standards Institution (ANSI) has classified a chapter of the PMI’s body of knowledge as a standard. GovS002 is the “standard” for P3M used by the UK government.

Frameworks:

The concept of a framework is probably the most difficult of the four to define. The PMI BoK v6 was widely referred to as a framework as is the Scrum Guide, despite these being two completely distinct texts. The definition of a framework according to the dictionary is “a basic structure underpinning a system, concept, or text.”

With the Praxis Framework, they wanted to create a fundamental framework for managing projects, programs, and portfolios that would allow the addition of ever-more-useful content for people and organizations looking to enhance P3M delivery.

To manage projects, programs, and portfolios holistically, they first identified four key areas: knowledge, method, competence, and capability maturity. We introduced the fifth section, the Encyclopaedia because these four areas constantly refer to tools, approaches, and models that are typically not covered in the BoKs, procedures, or standards.

The next step was to develop a content management system that could reflect the integration of these domains and was flexible enough to add new parts as needed. The addition of Team Praxis (which illustrates how different personality types interpret all other instructions), Praxis 360 (the 360-degree capability maturity assessment tool), and the translation into eight different languages all quickly came into play.

Praxis is a Framework as a result of this. It is a framework for keeping track of and communicating a body of content that is expanding and changing for everyone involved in a project, program, and portfolio management. It has evolved into a “one-stop-shop” for the kind of content that, in the past, required you to compile many publications and then figure out how to combine their disparate terminologies and structures.

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