Using Organizational Goals & Strategies for Better Project Plans
When a business is clear about its purpose, it is more likely to succeed because it can concentrate all its efforts into fulfilling that purpose. It’s the same way with project management. When your plans align with business goals, objectives, values, and priorities, you’ll have a better chance at achieving project success.
Things to Consider Before Creating Your Project Plans
Before you make your project plans, understand what your client is trying to achieve. Here are the things you’ll want to grasp before you start mapping out your tactics and strategies.
Company Mission
A company’s mission defines how that business wants to establish itself in the world. It indicates its purpose, the community it serves, and the lasting impact that it’s aiming for. Examples of companies with strong and clear mission statements are the following:
- Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
- TED Talks: “Spread ideas.”
- LinkedIn: “To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”
- Asana: “To help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly.”
As you can see, these statements don’t precisely indicate their product and service offerings, as those can change and evolve. What will stay constant, however, is the company mission. Checking this will help you identify what the company wants its efforts to build up to. This will help you position your project in such a way that it aligns with the company overall.
Company Goals
Visions and missions are usually long-term and general. To achieve them, a company needs to establish SMART goals.
SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. Making goals that have these attributes will make them actionable for everyone involved. Here are examples of goals that are SMART and goals that aren’t:
Relevant External Factors
No business exists in a bubble. It’s affected by several factors in its micro environment and macro environment.
Micro environment factors are ones that directly influence business results and operations. These include customers, competitors, suppliers, distributors, and others.
Macro environment factors, on the other hand, are broader things that affect a business. The COVID-19 pandemic is one such example. Environmental forces such as natural disasters and industry-affecting legislation are relevant examples, too. Studying external elements that can affect business decisions helps you pre-empt possible issues and objectives for your project.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Looking into a company’s external capabilities can help you maximize resources and anticipate bottlenecks. Check their organizational structure, leadership, skills, portfolio, processes, and employees. Are they working well for the company? Are there points of friction? Compile your findings by conducting a SWOT analysis.
SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. List internal capabilities under strengths or weaknesses, and external factors under opportunities and threats. Using this tool will help you make better decisions, estimates, and resource allocations. You’ll also get to identify areas where your team will need more support when the project commences.
Company Culture And Values
Culture and values highly influence a company’s priorities. If a company already has a list of core values, pore into them and grasp what they mean. To investigate this further, conduct interviews with some of their leaders, managers, and employees. Knowing what they value as individuals and as an organization can help you gain insight into what the company will find most significant in your project.