Business process management: establishing and maintaining project alignment (original) (raw)
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Alignment strategic in project-based businesses: a review of the literature
Iberoamerican Journal of Strategic Management (IJSM), 2021
This literature review sought to understand the theoreticalempirical connections of strategic alignment in project-based businesses Methodology: We carried out a systematic review with searches in scientific databases (Web of Science and Scopus) and application of technical snowballing with the intention of finding the most relevant works on the topic. The strings adopted were based on the keywords: project-based businesses and strategy. Filters related to the research area, the document types and the language were applied. The selected articles were analyzed following the steps: removal of duplicates, reading of titles, abstracts and quality assessment. After these steps, 20 papers were analyzed in a descriptive and exploratory way using VOSviewer, Biblioshiny and MS Excel software. Originality: The paper filled a gap concerning strategic alignment in the context of project-based business, which is an emerging concept that is little debated in the literature. Main results: The results showed a mutual influence between strategy alignment and project management. It was found that the first helps organizations to focus on correct projects, while project management helps achieves their strategic objectives. Four research focuses related to the strategic alignment in the PBB were also published in the literature: project management and organizational strategy; interaction between actors in the formation of strategies; program, portfolio and governance management; project management office and organizational design. Contributions: The contribution consists of presenting a set of propositions that systematize the findings of the papers and elucidate ways for the formation of a research agenda.
Enhancing Engineering Project Management Through Process Alignment
Engineering Management Journal, 2021
In order to lead successful projects, coordinating the different business units of a company is compulsory. This paper proposes a framework to make companies' practices evolve toward a better alignment of the business units based on their processes, and illustrates it with project management and systems engineering processes. Indeed, all the different organization units intend to serve the common global objective to satisfy the customer needs, and need to closely collaborate during projects. However, work organization in companies often leads to barriers between these stakeholders, with the result of an incoherent decision-making that may compromise project execution. Therefore, the issue of processes alignment from different domains lies at the very heart of ongoing research topics and ranks first among economic and industrial concerns. This paper uses a qualitative approach to show how different business units' processes can be integrated and illustrate this framework by aligning the systems engineering and project management processes within a certain engineering project context. By using the proposed framework, different teams (or even different companies, in a context of distributed enterprise) can align their practices, while also making them evolve toward a better compliance with standards.
A case study applying Process and Project Alignment Methodology
Software Process Improvement (SPI) is one of the main software development challenges. However, SPI standards and models (CMMI, SPICE) have not been always adopted with success. The current problem is a lack of strategy to implement successfully these standards and models. To undertake this objective is essential observe real life experiences and detect process and project mutual relationships. Without this alignment it will not be possible to find out how process management is really important to achieve organization's strategic objectives. This paper proposes a methodology that allows the definition, evaluation and improvement of an organization software development process. This proposal, called a Process and Project Alignment Methodology (ProPAM), allows the specification of an organization development process, as well process and project alignment. ProPAM presents the following life cycle: (1) process definition; (2) project definition considering a base process model; (3) project coordination and monitoring and (4) process improvement assessment. This paper also provides an overview of the action plan to be taken within the software organizations that intent to conduct a SPI initiative. This plan includes two distinct phases: (1) specify the development process and (2) analyze projects, starting an SPI effort. In order to evaluate ProPAM, a study case is undertaken. The case study is performed following the action plan and presents all the steps of the ProPAM. Final results show that, when the organization started using ProPAM, process and project alignment reduced project planning time and effort. ProPAM also introduced new organizational practices that result in a SPI program.
2013
Due to an increased need for learning modern project management methodologies, companies have been forced to improve their knowledge of Project Management Offices (PMO). Global business environment resulted with increased importance of project management methodologies, aligned with competitive strategies. Today, many organizations have recognized the importance of implementing PMO's for effective project control and better stakeholder (executives) support for projects. PMOs also undertake strategic roles such as incorporating higher management support to achieve strategic goals, integrating business strategies into project management efforts, and prioritization of projects. This paper examines PMOs in the process of strategic alignment. Moreover, the contribution of PMOs to achieve strategic goals is explored. Our initial findings are promising represented in a framework, and demonstrated by a case study application review using IT and telecommunication companies selected from Turkey. The research offers future directions and implications of a well-established successful PMO system.
Process and project alignment methodology: A case-study based analysis
Computer Science and Information Systems, 2016
Process descriptions represent high-level plans and do not contain information necessary for concrete software development projects. Processes that are unrelated to daily practices or that are hardly mapped to project practices, cause misalignments between processes and projects. We argue that software processes should emerge and evolve collaboratively within an organization. With this propose, this article describes the ProPAM methodology and explores the details of its static view. We also present a case study to validate effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The aim of the case study was to analyse the effects of using ProPAM in a IT organization.
Business-IS Alignment: Assessment Process to Align IT Projects With Business Strategy
2008
The value of information technology has been proved to be related to alignment between business and information systems (IS). However the constant report of failed IT projects suggests a misalignment between business and IS at the implementation stage. The majority of alignment assessment approaches focuses on the strategic level and overlooks the connections with IT projects. Although research has given little attention to this problem, it has been recognized that managers must focus on IT project planning as a mediator to improve business-IS alignment. This research proposes an assessment process across different organizational levels (strategic, tactical and operational). In doing so, the strategic alignment maturity (SAM) model is used and adapted to include the assessment of IT projects alignment maturity. IT projects are considered the unit of analysis that represents the operational implementation of strategies. The assessment process proposed has been tested in an SME in order to understand its practicability and limitations. The results show that is feasible to use the SAM model to assess the IT projects alignment maturity. Moreover, analyzing alignment across different organizational levels (strategic, tactic and operational) provides a more complete picture of the organization's alignment maturity that could facilitate the design of specific actions to improve the project alignment with business objectives.
2009
Despite numerous efforts to integrate business and IS strategic plans, organisations are not delivering the expected benefits from IS investment. To address this issue, IS alignment research has discussed extensively the idea of establishing two-way commitment between business and IS managers. This commitment, however, has proved to be difficult to achieve at strategic level and consequently difficult to transmit to lower levels within organisations. Given that current literature has identified the main factors affecting IS alignment, this research extends the analysis of those factors to tactical and operational levels to develop a model that depicts the dynamic interrelationships between the factors affecting IS alignment. Through an interpretative approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods, the model was developed, tested and evaluated in three phases. During the exploratory phase the factors IT governance, communication, partnership, IT value, scope & architecture and human resources skills were scrutinised using a pilot case study and a survey. The results aided the selection of relevant variables that could be used in the model to assess alignment across different levels, and therefore, to develop a preliminary model that included the initial relationships between the factors. For the IV Alignment of IT Projects with Business Strategy Anabel Gutiérrez DECLARATIONS The following publications have been produced as a direct or indirect result of the research discussed in this thesis:
The need for integration between organizational project management and change management
Organizational project management focuses on the delivery of business objectives, using a multi-layered integration of portfolio, program, and project management. This is contrasted with change management, an approach to delivering changes in organizations based in a significantly different intellectual heritage. It is argued that although the differences between the philosophies underlying these disciplines can cause tension, an integrated approach involving project management and change management will be more effective in delivering organizational objectives than using either in isolation.