Technology and strategic management by projects

Accelerating technological and business change has challenged the survival of firms and their ability to sustain competitive advantage. Failures of vision and focus are cited as common reasons for company failures. Yet clear strategic vision and clearly focused strategic plans are insufficient to sustain competitive advantage. Simultaneously, several sources have written about how firms are beginning to use project management based approaches to manage their organizations, yet these approaches are generally not closely linked to the strategic plan. Strategic management by projects (SMBP) is the approach presented herein to link and tightly integrate an effective strategic planning process with the process for implementing the strategic plan to build and sustain the firm's competitive advantage. The implementation focuses on maximizing throughput of the strategic portfolio of strategy-fulfilling projects. The paper develops the essential elements of the SMBP process, the critical integrative links and critical success factors that should be in place, metrics for evaluating and improving strategic implementation performance, and case highlights to illustrate key points. Executive buy-in is easily attained using the proposed approach. In fact, active involvement of executives becomes a natural and value-added part of the process, since the focus is on the effective implementation of the strategic plan and on sustaining the firm's competitive advantage.