Introduction
Project management strategy and governance has become popular with organisations’ life cycle today. This is used in many companies and industries for research and development of new products, to implement new processes in manufacturing and information systems as well as constructing, engineering and construction projects, just to mention a few (Archer and Ghasemzadeh 1999).
The strategy deployed by any organization will be at least aimed at driving such an organization in achieving a substantial competitive advantage. Therefore developing dynamic management strategy and governance will enable any organization to analyze its creation of wealth (Archer and Ghasemzadeh 1999).
The way projects are managed is what differentiates a successful project and a failing one and this explains why some firms are able to build a competitive advantage even in times of drastic changes and global economic crisis. Project management and strategy will at times call for creative destruction of existing competencies which may not be compatible with the world of technology and innovation based.
These are determined heavily by some important parameters like price and performance rivalry, increasing returns et cetera. Project management and governance starts with an understanding of what an organisations is. For this case an organisations is an entity that creates value by transforming resource inputs to outputs such as product services and ideas using resources that are available, when required and facilitating transformation.
This is where projects come into the field and leadership becomes an indispensable entity in directing and focusing the value creation in terms of placing opportunities where they are needed.
This comes in hardy in the exercise of expertise in prioritizing the use of scarce resources and opportunities and thus management and leadership efforts and energy will require sustainable strategy and governance to maximize the company’s competitive advantage.
To fully implement a sustainable Project management strategy and governance, an organization must have in mind the three main schools of strategy which can be adopted with regard to the kind of project to be implemented.
Project management is tasked with planning and controlling of the project in order to enable the project to achieve the desired organizational objectives and the strategy is how and in what manner this implementation will be carried out (Soderlund 2004).
Therefore the strategy may employ some thought patterns for instance the prescriptive school of though that deals with how things should be put in place in order for a project to achieve the set goals, how to analyze the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and threats in the strategy and governance as well as placing everything where they are required and finally aim to find gaps which require filling and filling them.
There is also the descriptive school which handles strategy and governance at entrepreneurial level. This is concerned with how the reflexive and adaptable persons can develop and pursue a vision and how the decision making processes can shape the strategy. Moreover it also evaluates how concepts dominate strategy and how power, culture and various environments influence the strategy.
The other school of thought is concerned with the processes of configuration and transformation. All these will be competing in the list whenever an organization is thinking of Project management strategy and governance (Teece et al. 1997).
The success of Project management strategy and governance will be determined by the ability of stakeholders to understand the project successes and failures. This will shape the management environment and therefore the ability of those involved to know how effective leadership and governance will be delivered.
Furthermore understanding a project can give a hint on whether the strategies and governance to be deployed will deliver or fail. Lastly understanding project success and failures will involve being versed with what affects the project and what is affected by the project and this creates a room to understand stakeholders management.
Governance on the other hand will be driven by the purpose of the project, structure, delivering means and capacity as well as core values in the governing body namely accountability and transparency. This paper therefore will evaluate the organizational involvement in the Project management strategy and governance, the way project generation strategy influences the goals and missions, facilitate the required capacity.
The case study involved is that of a huge project within the national bank, where I work in Saudi Arabia, articulating project management strategy and governance objectives and deliverables.
This will be followed by the analysis and discussion of the Project management strategy and governance based on the sources in the literature review. Finally the paper will summarize the Project management strategy and governance scope and give conclusion on how the project in the case could have been effectively implemented.
The scope
There are numerous tactics or strategies that are available for project management but this paper focuses on the extent of the project particular to the national bank in Saudi Arabia.
It will explore the most effective Project management strategy and governance that could lead to the success of the project. The paper will also cover the critical factors effective organizational firms, rules and resources required for Project management strategy and governance.
Limitations
There are many strategies of project management and governance and this paper may not discuss all of them. The paper will however attempt to offer a comprehensive discussion of strategies which are applicable to the project case in question.
Literature Review
Today there is an expanded research on project management and organizational issues which focuses sorely on the implementation thus calling for various analyses levels. Project based firms have geared their attention toward understanding, analyzing and deploying concepts like management of projects and management by projects (Soderlund 2004,p.655).
Project management is however not a new field because it dates back to 1955 when firms were faced with rapid need to expand and develop project scheduling and planning techniques (Soderlund 2004). What governance is to the executive is a set of responsibilities and practices that they execute in terms of providing strategic direction, monitoring the achievement of the set objectives as well as managing risks.
In the management of risks, the executive has the responsibility to offset any imminent risk or manage it so that it does not be a barrier in the implementation of the project. Since governance is a specialized and complex phenomenon, all executives must participate in setting directions and insist on control (Teece et al. 1997).
The executive must rely on the lower layers in order to source information and ideas on sound decision making and evaluation activities (Teece et al. 1997). For effective project governance therefore the organisations must ensure that lower layers apply the very principles applied by executive management which include coming up with objectives, direction and evaluating measures with regard to performance.
Moreover, the role of development of relationships, contracts and executive cooperation is very important in ensuring the success of Project management strategy and governance (Soderlund 2004). There are however several reasons as to why many projects will fail and all boil down to poor project management.
Lack of clear project strategy is usually an easy trap for organisations especially at the stage of project planning (Soderlund 2004). The factors that affect cost and schedule are almost common in most industries but what differ are the cultural and religious traditions inherited by managers around the world (Gaddis 1997, p.38).
Gaddis analyses that projects management strategy and governance execution fails because of the kind of inherited cultures that are not compatible with future oriented management needs.
This anomaly is given a solution by Snowden and Boone (2007,) as they write that “…time has come to broaden the traditional approaches to leadership and decision making (p. 75).”
It is therefore advantageous for the company when there isa framework enabling executive to embrace new perspectives which would address real world challenges in the project management strategies. This argument drives us to want to know exactly what is needed primarily in project management strategy and governance.
The phenomenon, as outlined before, is a complex situation that requires numerous decision makers and comprehensive involvement of all stakeholders in an organization. Snowden and Boone (2007, p. 75) analyze that a successful project is the one which in its implementation all the stakeholders embrace communicative culture.
This communicative culture is important because it fosters democracy, interactive and multidirectional debate sessions. To add to that the debate sessions will also generate innovative ideas that can be deployed in solving complex decision issues in the strategy generation.
The other solution and strategy to foster good governance is to set rules that guide the working of all stakeholders, insiders and outsiders, so that they can perform their duties for the benefit of the project and organization in general (Teece et al. 1997).
For instance the contractors must be guided by rules and on how they are supposed to deliver the services they contract and when. This will enable them to work hard and draw their objectives which will be limited in time and therefore project implementation will be successful and timely.
More important also is the side of the management where in project strategy, they should encourage and embrace dissent and diversity, thorough formal debates that leads to “well formed patterns and ideas” (Snowden and Boone 2007, p.75). Snowden and Boone proceed to analyze this model and they proposes for instance a case where;
A “ritual dissent” approach for instance, puts parallel teams to work on the same problem in a large group meeting environment. Each team appoints a spokesperson who moves from that team table to another teams table. The spokesperson presents the first groups conclusion while the second group listens in silence.
The spokesperson the turns around to face away from the second team which rips into the presentation no hold barred while the spokesperson listens quietly (p.75).
This model has been effective in enabling executives and top managers to develop a listening culture, speak openly and agreeing to disagree with the aim of coming into a consensus at last. Therefore the underlying factor in discussing this model is the importance of opening up and communication among the executives as a project management strategy.
This strategy enables the stakeholders to know when to share powers and when to act on their prerogatives in dealing with complex and paradoxical projects. Therefore competitive advantage in any organization is highly dependent on managerial strategy and governance, how every stakeholder is involved in the decision making (Teece et al. 1997, p. 518).
Finally the choice of project management governance strategy is a tricky process considering that there are many people who are supposed to get involved. Different projects require different approaches but the most important is the fact that an organization should select a project that it can fully implement (Teece et al. 1997, p. 518).
This is because the success of a project is depended on the project portfolio selection as analyzed by Archer and Ghasemzadeh (1999) where they state that “a project selection framework should be flexible enough so that stakeholders can choose… the pattern and techniques…to implement it” (p. 208).
Once the correct project is analyzed, selected and proposed, and all stakeholders are involved it will give the executive easy time to ponder its management strategies and governance and this will culminate to implementing possible and achievable targets.
The Data and Result
The context of the project
A National Bank is one of the biggest banks in Saudi Arabia with its headquarters located in Riyadh the capital city. The bank brags itself with a business reputation of over 50 years of experience in the country’s banking business. Currently it has a network of over 550 branches around the country and it has the largest customer base in Saudi Arabia.
The firm has a well defined vision where it hopes to build 500 branches in three years, and 400 of them to be completed during the first two years, to lead the banking business market in the country and broaden its customer base by implementing these projects.
The bank intends to invest 350 million Saudi riyals for this investment. The company has also invested much on the project by employing a huge team work on the project where everybody was assigned different duties and responsibilities.
The project was implemented under the Designs and the Project Management Department, where people are allocated different responsibilities. There is also an inside consultant who supports the project managers, and variety of contractors who implement these projects.
The objectives of the project are
- To provide advance banking services for all business and individual clients in the country
- To increase the number of branches that introduce the organization services in all regions
- To strengthen banking quality services, add value to the bank services, and increase bank operations
The key stakeholder objectives
- To complete the project on time within the budget with high quality
- To manage all aspects of project planning, implementation and completion
- To monitoring and controlling the external stakeholders
- To following up the progress of work and reporting to the client
The project management scope for this project ranges from the designing branch to the project operation. That will be broken down into the following:
The project deliverables
- Coordination with the consultant designer for the work on the required designs
- Delivery of the designs and the site so the contractor can start work
- Receipt of periodic reports from the consultant and a follow-up on the work progress
- Coordination with the Procurement Department for necessary supplies
- Direct coordination with major suppliers, for example the furniture supplier
- Approval of the bills for each of the consultants, contractors and suppliers
- Handover of all stages of primary handover and the materials on-site
- Final handover and operation process
The Analysis and the Discussion
However, though the company had a clear vision, operational problems did happen during the implementation stage and as a end result the project was not achieved on schedule, some of the major reasons that caused the project not to be termed as a success were due to the fact that there was no support from the top management; some of the stakeholders were not involved and even some of the managers of the project was not competent.
The performance by suppliers and also by the consultants was also poor. Another problem was that there was poor leadership and such a big project required past experience which the bank did not possess. These factors when combined with the global problems such as the finance crisis led to the failure of the project.
According to the case of national bank, it is evident that failure to set up good project management strategy and governance leads to the failure of even grand projects. The company had set very clear vision but at the implementation level, where strategy management plays the key role, it became a complete debacle due to various factors.
The lack of support from the top management is a clear indication that there was no governance and commitments from the executive to provide strategic decisions.
It is this management team which ensures that objectives of projects are achieved, risks are foreseen and effectively managed needless to mention effective allocation of resources in the implementation of the project. When the management failed to show up in these duties therefore, they raised a red flag I what would be failing project implementation.
Poor project management and governance also led to over-reliance on managerial prerogatives in implementing a complex project which requires a participation of all people and thorough discussion before any decision was reached. That is why some stakeholders were not involved in decision making, an act which usually leads to half cooked decisions by incompetent persons.
When projects are managed by inexperienced persons hiding behind their managerial prerogatives, it is likely to fail and the only remedy is for the management to incorporate outsider ideas and decisions as well as creating space for dissent views as was proposed by Snowden and Boone (2007).
It is also noted that even if the project was badly affected by the global crisis, there could have been a problem in the project selection framework and probably the bank could have settled to a less challenging project which could fit its experience and the performance ability of its suppliers and consultants (Archer and Ghasemzadeh 1999).
According to the goals and objectives of this project as set by the organization, this seemed to be a very good project and if good management and governance was set in implementing it, it would have done excellent.
However the organization’s involvement went as far as proposing it but it seems that there was no managerial will to implement it, or the stakeholders did not agree on the involvement of everyone in its implementations.
On the other hand the fact that the project felt the hitch of global crisis casts some doubts as to whether this project was fit and attainable by the organization as well as external stakeholders like the consultancy firms and suppliers who are said to have failed too in their parts.
Lack of competency was another problem which led to project the project failure and thus it is important for the managers because if competent people were deployed they would have helped with a proper implementation (Teece et al. 1997, p.524; Gaddis 1997).
Further more project planning, monitoring, client consultation and even the support of the management are inevitable management strategies which would have come successfully with proper governance (Soderlund 2004). That is why it can be argued that the decision to engage in this project by the organization was flawed as it was its implementation strategy and governance.
The project generation strategy setting was poor because of the single fact that the preparation and development of the project reached a dead end when stakeholders lacked the required management and governance strategy which could see the project through.
As a result the bank could not advance banking services for its clients in the country, the number of branches could not be increased as targeted and to say the list the project was not completed in time and not all aspects of project planning were implemented (Soderlund 2004).
Instead of involving everyone in the implementation the managers withdrew their control and some stakeholders were factored out in decision making hence this project generation strategy ended up rendering the mission and goals of the project futile.
However this project can be said to have been the right project but the strategy of one group approach where managers are said to have withdrawn from the control and this led to reluctance of suppliers. However even the best project, with effective organizational form, rules and resources can be a failure if there is no effective management strategy and governance structure in implementing it.
On the side of governance the purpose of the project, the capacity of the organization to deliver and more so the core values such as accountability and transparency are required if any project has to sail through. According to out case there was no way there could be accountability when top management could not control the way resources were used, the way suppliers and contractors carried out their work and so on.
Support from the top management has also been revealed as an important aspect, which contributes to the success of management and governance strategy. This is due to the fact that with the support from the management, implementation of the goals and objective would have been easier and they would have ensured wise allocations of resources.
Conclusion
In the above case of national bank the project could have succeeded if the executives took their responsibility as is required by the project management and government and this means that the strategy was poorly contemplated. For any project to succeed all executive and other stake holders must participate and exercise control over the implementation of such projects.
For this to be done effectively there should be effective interactive communication among the stakeholders and bridging the gap because project is a decision to invest business resources and when all players contribute to such a decision the whole business will benefit.
Moreover setting of proper governing rules is very important in project management because this makes easy for the contractors and suppliers to deliver good results in their contracted duties. If this was done national bank project would not have had its suppliers fail to deliver results in their services.
The project would also have been more effective if the decision making was devolved to all stake holders because the incompetent and inexperienced persons would not have been left to manage the project but the decisions would have been discussed first.
Serious management strategy would also have ensured that all technical parts of the implementation is handled by experts especially the external sources who have long time experience in dealing with such big and complex projects.
Reference List
Archer, N.P. and Ghasemzadeh, F., 1999. An integrated Framework for Project Portfolio Selection. International Journal of Project Management, 17(4), pp. 207-216.
Gaddis, P.O., 1997. Strategy under attack. Long Range Planning, 30(1), pp. 38-45.
Snowden, D.J. and Boone, M.E., 2007. Leaders Framework for Decision Making, Harvard Business Review, 85(11), pp.69-76.
Soderlund, J., 2004. On the Broadening Scope of the Research on Projects: A Review and a Model for Analysis. International Journal of Project Management, 22(8), pp. 655-667.
Teece, et al., 1997. Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management. Strategic Management Journal, 18(7), pp. 509-533.