Strategic management tools in projects case construction project
Abstract
The important role of using mission, vision and strategy has been acknowledged in most organizations today. Mission is the reasonthe organization exists. Vision is the ideal state of the organization in the future. Strategy defines the way of how to get towards the ideal state introduced in the vision. These tools are considered to be very useful in guiding the whole organization into the same direction. Different ways of producing mission, vision and strategy have been developed. In projects, using these tools are still quite rare even though it is acknowledged that projects in an organization should support the overall strategy of the organization. In addition, every project should have a clear direction where to go and this direction should be stated to every stakeholder of the project. In this paperwill discuss the possibilities of using strategic management tools in project environment.
A case study is used to illustrate the use of strategic management tools in a construction project. The construction project is still goingbut already now it can be seen that vision building really helped getting the end user organization committed, and they have been very active in all steps of the design process, e.g. given their opinions in different matters. The vision has also been used when prioritizing different choices.2007 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Strategic management; Mission; Vision; Strategy; Project management
Introduction
The research on projects has expanded during the last decades. The focus of the project research and also the focus of the strategic perspective of projects is either on a single or multi-project level, or on the whole organization level (verify [29]). Projects and strategies have been approached e.g. with the following views:
Project business strategies. The project portfolio strategy (e.g. [3–5]) is one of the most important views. The front end of the projects is one approach to the project business strategies. The challenge lies on what kind of projects to select and how to manage all the different kinds of projects.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +358 6 326 3251; fax: +358 6 326 3112. E-mail address: marja.naaranoja@puv.fi (M. Naaranoja).
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‘Project strategy refers to a high level plan for achieving the given project’s objectives (e.g. [1]). There are strategic decisions in every stage of the project.
‘Project management strategy refers to a strategy for the management of a project like teaming strategy; flexibility of projects; risk management avoidance strategy like piloting; contract strategy and alliances.
Many researchers have pointed out the importance of defining and managing the final project product (e.g. [3,23,12]). Combination of project and program or project plans and other management plans are used to manage programs and projects, parts of which describe how the project is to be undertaken – in other words, its strategy [23]. Value management combined with risk management supports the achievement of strategic objectives.
Projects have typically at least four phases: (1) proposal and initiation; (2) definition and appraisal; (3) implementa-