Project management processes and the achievement of organizational strategies: The case of telecomm. Operator

In recent times, there has been a shift in the usage of project management principles. It is a shift from individual competencies related to the implementation of individual projects to organisational competencies related to the implementation of a portfolio of projects executed in order to achieve corporate strategies. This shift has made many organisations to re-assess their capabilities in the project management knowledge area. Greater use is now being made of business maturity models, and based on their level, processes are being developed that link organisational strategy with project execution, as means of achieving corporate strategies. The recent development of the Organization Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) introduced by the Project Management Institute (PMI) is a move towards the utilization of project management concepts and processes as tools to achieve organizational strategies. Projects are required to translate corporate strategies into workable solutions through effective implementation of the five generic phases of the project management process, namely, initiation, planning, execution, control, and closeout. These phases define the boundaries between the various activities and tasks throughout the project lifecycle and provide the framework by which projects are used to deliver corporate strategy. This paper reports the initial stages of an on-going postgraduate research study into the benefits of utilizing the project management processes model as a tool to drive organizational strategies through better projects' performance. The context for this action-research study is based on a large international telecommunication operator. The paper will make a case study with reference to this industrial context and evaluate available literature related to the concepts associated with enterprise project management processes so as to evaluate their potential as tools to effect the shift identified above.