From: http://www.bizjournals.com/

It’s no secret that well-implemented strategies are essential to any organization’s ability to grow and succeed.

According to Why Good Strategies Fail: Lessons for the C-Suite, an Economist Intelligence Unit report sponsored by PMI, 88 percent of organizations said implementing strategic initiatives successfully would be ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ for their competitiveness over the next three years.

Yet 61 percent of firms struggle to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and implementation, and just over half of strategic initiatives are successful.

An appropriately structured, resourced, and funded project management office (PMO) can be the critical link between strategy and implementation. A PMO is responsible for maintaining the standards for project management within an organization, including supporting the execution of project work; it can effectively do so by implementing proven practices and providing a central point of contact for all project managers.

PMOs can also provide training, mentoring, and capability development for project personnel, facilitate knowledge transfer, and perform portfolio management functions to ensure strategy alignment and benefits realization.

Shaping decisions

Drilling down, one of the most important functions of a PMO is its role in shaping decisions about projects and programs based on their alignment with the company’s strategy — and obtaining the necessary resources and information needed to make the right decisions.

That means going beyond routine status reports and dashboards that don’t provide any context about a project’s alignment to strategy. It means regularly informing key decision-makers about the full portfolio of projects and programs, what resources are being used, and what benefits are being realized.

With the right information, decision-makers can evaluate projects against the context of changing business dynamics and determine whether they warrant continued investment.

Sound project management isn’t only about keeping projects moving along; it is also about delaying or cancelling projects and programs that no longer make sense from a strategic perspective. It doesn’t mean that the project or program can’t or won’t deliver results, but that the results won’t meet the current organizational needs. By their very nature, projects aren’t static, and project management practices can’t be either.