Aligning Your Projects with Business Strategies: Best Practices

Why do organizations launch and run projects? Obviously, because they intend to derive benefits from their initiatives—whether those are financial gains, new market opportunities, employee productivity, or any other positive business outcomes.

But all project benefits are not equal for a given company. A discount retailer typically cares less about an initiative to establish a high-end, premium brand image and more about a cost-oriented project. And a startup probably won’t need an organizational culture framework as much as a large global corporation. 

To make a long story short, C-suite and project management professionals should ensure the initiatives they invest in meet their organization’s overarching business goals. Implementing best practices to align their project management with business strategies can help them achieve organizational objectives and stay ahead of the curve.

Why it is critical to align project management with business strategies

As organizations strive to drive growth, efficiency, and innovation, ensuring that every project is aligned with overarching business goals is crucial for success. Strategy-aligned project organizations have reported benefits across the board, including:

• Efficient resource allocation: Without alignment, projects can diverge from core business objectives, resulting in wasted resources. Closely aligning project management with business goals makes it easier to allocate resources effectively, ensuring that the right people and funds are directed toward the most impactful initiatives.
• Improved decision-making: Strategic alignment ensures that decisions are made with the organization’s long-term goals in mind, leading to smarter, more informed choices. Optimizing decision-making is of particular importance when building or reviewing project portfolios.
• Business sustainability and long-term value: By aligning projects and portfolios with their overarching business strategies, organizations ensure initiatives contribute to creating long-term strategic value rather than just short-term gains.

With strategy-aligned projects, the efforts and resources invested in initiatives directly contribute to the goals of the organization. By maintaining this alignment, and supplementing strategies with tools, businesses can prioritize projects that offer the highest value, streamline decision-making, and have all teams work towards a unified vision. 

Best practices to align projects with business strategies

Whether managing an IT initiative, launching a new product, or optimizing operations, there are certain best practices for aligning projects with business strategies. Following them can help any business leader meet organizational objectives and stay ahead of the curve.

Clearly define business goals and objectives

Successful project alignment starts with understanding the organization’s strategic goals and objectives. Before selecting and initiating any projects, decision-makers should clearly articulate what the organization aims to achieve, both in the short and long term.

For example, a business looking to enhance customer satisfaction through digitalization should ensure that IT projects and resources are directed toward creating customer-centric solutions that align with this overall business goal.

Case in point: TotalEnergies, a leader in the global energy market, has set a course to reduce carbon emissions by 25% and methane emissions by 80% by 2030. One of the biggest challenges they faced, leading them to invest in PPM software, was aligning a billion-dollar portfolio with priorities. Planisware’s PPM solution has helped the global corporation meet its sustainability objectives and effectively allocate resources to strategic activities while maintaining schedules. 

Planisware allows us to deliver high-value projects on time and within budget, maximizing our global reach and impact.

- Frederic Calderini, Product Owner at TotalEnergies

Planning and prioritizing initiatives based on business strategy is a top-down approach to project and portfolio management (as opposed to a bottom-up approach, where project initiatives guide strategic planning). This is one of the foundations of strategic portfolio management (SPM).

Select projects wisely—and strategically

Once you clearly understand the business strategy, the next step is to establish clear criteria for selecting projects that will contribute to these objectives. Projects directly aligned with strategic goals should take priority, while those that offer limited strategic value can be postponed or canceled.

To do so, PMOs should create a project portfolio management framework that evaluates potential projects based on how well they align with business objectives. This framework ensures that only high-impact projects are executed, allowing the organization to successfully navigate shifts in the market landscape and technology to maintain its competitive edge.

A state-of-the-art PPM platform can prove instrumental in defining and maintaining strategic project selection criteria to facilitate the process. Supporting the selection and prioritization of strategy-fit projects is one of the key selling points of strategic portfolio management tools like Planisware.

This is exactly why Woodward, a leading provider of energy control solutions for the aerospace and industrial markets, chose to adopt Planisware. For them, the decision was not merely about adopting a new tool. It was about aligning every project management operation under a single, coherent strategy.

Monitor alignment with business strategy throughout project execution

After kick-off, key performance indicators can help measure the progress of the project and its alignment with business goals, ensuring strategic fitness at every stage.

Organizations should implement a robust project tracking system that integrates performance data and strategic KPIs. In addition to fostering ongoing alignment, this will give teams the tools they need to adjust course when necessary.

Using tools like Planisware, PMOs ensure that project managers can make data-driven adjustments in real-time. and that each project supports the company’s vision.

Secure leadership support

For projects to truly align with business strategies, leadership must be fully invested in the success of these projects. This means not only offering strategic guidance but also providing the necessary resources, support, and authority to overcome challenges.

Driving buy-in on complex projects requires engaging leadership early and often. Senior executives should be involved in setting the strategic vision and ensuring the alignment of key projects with broader business goals.

“Having strong management buy-in makes a big difference. When leaders support the change, adoption is much easier,” said Yohan Fontanier, Application Manager at Tractebel. One of the strategic goals of this global engineering and consulting company was to foster a unified company culture. C-suite buy-in when implementing Planisware to standardize project management processes helped them not only standardize project management processes but most of all, encourage collaboration.

Aligning projects for strategic success: How to pick the best projects AND execute seamlessly  

Projects’ failure to deliver on objectives is frequently blamed on poor execution. But achieving successful business outcomes is primarily about choosing the right projects..

Professional project portfolio management software will help your organization succeed on both fronts. Learn how the right tool can empower your PMO to optimize both project selection and execution in our dedicated guide. If you are more of the learning-by-doing type, book your free demo now!