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Strategic Project Management Alex S. Brown, PMP Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (MSIG USA) Session ADV09
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Strategic Project Management

Alex S. Brown, PMP

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (MSIG USA)

Session ADV09

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What is a Project Nightmare?

• Over budget?

• Late delivery?

• Poor quality?

• Even worse: on-time, on-budget, great quality, but delivering something your organization does not need

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Case Study

• Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group USA– 400-person subsidiary of MSI Japan– Property & Casualty insurer, mostly

commercial– Largest book is the US risks of Japanese

companies

• One-person Strategic Planning Office

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Session Overview

• What is strategic planning at MSIG USA?

• How does project management complement strategic planning?

• How do senior executives participate in projects and strategy at MSIG USA?

• What project management trends support strategic planning?

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What is “Strategic Planning”?

• Definition debated for years among academics and business leaders

• Typically a one- to five-year plan at MSIG USA– What projects to launch, what to continue– Align with medium- and long-term business

plans from USA and Tokyo

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Key Concepts for MSIG USA

• Executive Steering Committee– Was an actual committee in the past– Changed to become the President and CEO– Approve changes, provide executive oversight

• The Strategic Plan– By definition, a collection of projects– Projects are essential to strategy at MSIG

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What is the Strategic Plan?

• A collection of 15 to 25 active projects, plus more planned for the future

• Monitored by a Strategic Planning Office

• Authorized by top management

• Cross-departmental impact

• Relevant to medium- and long-term plans

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Strategic Planning Office

• Combination of a corporate planning function and a PMO

• “Project Portfolio Administration” function

• Mentor all project managers

• Audit and monitor budgets, schedules, results

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Partial Organization Chart

CEO

Office of the CEO President

SPO and othersUnderwriting, CIO,Ops, Finance, others

Internal Audit

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How Project Management Complements Strategic Planning

• Strategic Planning provides ideas

• Project Management achieves results

• Projects drive strategic changes

• Feedback loop for continuous change

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Strategic Planning – Ideas

• Projects are based on ideas and objectives

• Strategic planning creates them– SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities

Threats)– Competitive Analysis and other studies– Market share goals– Vision statements

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Project Management Achieves Results

• How to execute strategy?

• Project management provides a robust way to execute change

• Assign project manager, defining accountability and responsibility

• Avoid creating strategy that is never realized or even attempted

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Project Results Drive Change

• Each project advances one or more strategic goal

• Some projects investigate an issue, creating new strategic goals at the end

• Some projects fail, but all are relevant

• Failure often uncovers key information

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Continuous Feedback Loop

Ideas

Projects

Strategy

Change

Staff Feedback and Ideas

Organizational Plan Updates

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Events that Join Strategy and Projects

• Project start-up

• Project closure

• Budget and resource authorization

• Resource conflicts and priorities

• Organizational crisis and strategic change

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Project Start-Up

• Most strategic moment of a project is right when it is authorized

• Strategy helps answer, “Why should we do this?” or “What is the goal?”

• PM helps you climb the ladder, strategy helps make sure it is on the right wall

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Project Closure

• A time to gather new ideas

• Teams see unsolved problems and issues

• At MSIG these ideas become new project proposals

• Ensure that good ideas are not lost

• A gift to the strategic planner

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Budget and Resource Authorization

• Projects constantly fight for resources and funding

• Tying projects to strategy allows PMs to explain their need in strategic terms

• Examining all project resource requests in terms of strategy helps eliminate “pet projects”

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Project Prioritization

• Often project conflicts arise, requiring a decision

• Organizational strategy can provide a more relevant way to score and rank projects

• Strategic planners are accustomed to scoring systems to set priorities, and can help design an appropriate system

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Crisis and Strategic Change

• Any crisis or critical event causes project uncertainty

• Strategic planners face uncertainty as well

• These times call for coordination– Practical, tactical ideas from project managers– Industry trends and top-down perspectives from

strategists

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Involving Senior Management

• Tie project management to something they must do

• Decision making

• Training

• Constant reinforcement

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Project Management Tied to Strategy

• At MSIG USA, medium- and long-term plans were required by Tokyo

• Project management easy to support as a way to implement these plans

• Project practices have become an ordinary way of doing business for executives

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Decision Making

• At MSIG USA, projects have become a way for executives to see progress more clearly

• Each status report is a chance to provide input

• Provided a formal, documented decision-making process

• Easier for senior managers to control

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Project Management Training

• Over 10% of the staff, including senior management, was trained in project management

• Many managers accepted roles as project managers or sponsors

• Middle and senior management reinforce training by using the terms regularly

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Constant Reinforcement

• Projects appear everywhere now– Company intranet– Bimonthly reports to senior management and

staff

• Continuing education for project managers

• Projects are now normal business

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Trends in Project Management Related to Strategy

• Project Management Maturity Models

• Standards and Books

• PMI Goals and Marketing

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Project Management Maturity Models

• An explosion of models

• Hard to measure process maturity without organizational strategy

• OPM3: “Transform Strategy into Results”

• Executive-level focus of these models encouraging project managers and strategists to meet and talk

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Portfolio Management Standards and Books

• How long can we focus on “selection”?

• Strategy encourages “start up” and “creation”

• Design new projects to fill voids in the portfolio

• Do not just select projects from a fixed list

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Many Books “Selection-Focused”

• Standard for Portfolio Management (PMI)– “priority” & “select” appear 70 times– “new component” appears 10 times

• New books account for the creation of the project and organizational strategy– Heerkens, The Business-Savvy Project Manager

– Dinsmore & Cooke-Davies, The Right Projects Done Right!

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PMI Goals and Marketing• PMI is promoting project management at

the executive level– “Worldwide, organizations will embrace, value

and utilize project management and attribute their success to it.”

– “Making project management indispensable for business results.”

• Achievable in partnership with strategists

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Summary

• MSIG USA made “project management” inseparable from “strategic planning”

• Reinforced from start-up to closure

• Strategic planning and project management support and reinforce each other

• Industry trends support integrating them

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Challenge: Link Strategy to Project Management at Your Organization

• How could the MSIG USA example help?

• What can you change? Whose help do you need?

• Are your projects already strategically aligned? If not, why not?

• PMI has set a vision for all of us – achieve it in your organization!

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Contact Information• Alex S. Brown, PMP

Mitsui Sumitomo Ins. (MSIG USA)

• Phone 908-229-0202

• Email [email protected] or [email protected]

• Session ADV09

• Website http://www.alexsbrown.com


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