EXECUTIVE INVOLVEMENT - Strategic Planning for Project Management

Senior management’s involvement in strategic planning is essential if the process is to move ahead quickly and if full employee commitment and acceptance is to be achieved. The need for involvement is essential:

1. A visible general endorsement is mandatory.
2. An executive champion (not sponsor) must be assigned.
3. The executive champion must initiate the process.
4. The executive champion must make sure that the ideas/aspirations of senior management are included throughout the methodology.
5. The executive champion must verify the validity of the corporate assumptions, including:
   • Forward pricing rate data
   • Targeted customers/industries
   • Reporting requirement for senior management
   • Strategic trends
   • Customer interfacing requirements

If senior management’s support is not visible right from the onset, then:

• The workers may believe that senior management is not committed to the process.
• Functional managers may hesitate to provide valuable support, believing that the process is unreal.
• The entire process may lack realism and waste time.

Another critical function of senior management is determining “strategic timing.” A strategic plan is a timed sequence of conditional moves that involve the deployment of resources. The executive champion must either develop or approve the strategic timing activities, which include:

• Establishing the timetable for major moves
• Establishing resource requirements and assuring availability
• Providing funding release time for critical assets and hardware/software purchases to support the project management systems