Name: Strategic Project Management Made Simple
Rating: 4 (108 reviews)
Author: Terry Dean Schmidt

What’s in it for me? A strategic mindset for project success.

Successful project delivery in today’s rapid-paced business environment requires going beyond traditional management techniques. The key is to lead strategically – which involves tightly aligning initiatives to organizational strategy while maintaining the flexibility to adapt plans based on changing conditions and learnings.

This Blink to Terry Schmidt’s Strategic Project Management Made Simple outlines everything you need to know to meet these challenges. Whether you’re starting a new project or redirecting efforts midstream, get ready to hop into the mindset of a strategic thinker.

Your strategic foundation

Laying a solid strategic foundation is crucial to project success. To start, you need to define your objectives and link them in an “if-then” logic flow. The Logical Framework Approach, often shown as a LogFrame matrix, can help you here. It’s a tool for structured project planning and management that enables you to clearly outline a project’s main objectives and track their progress.

Here's a simplified structure of a LogFrame matrix:

In your first row, your goal encompasses the broader objective the project aims to contribute to. This is usually at the company level – where are you heading in the long term?

Next up is your purpose, or outcome – the direct impact of the project. You’ll get a little more specific here. Why are you doing this project, and how does it support your longer term goals?

Third are your outputs, which are the specific results or products that need to be produced to accomplish the purpose. Outputs are tangible deliverables that are totally in your team’s control.

In your final row, list your activities – the tasks that need to be done to achieve the outputs. These are your specific, day-to-day actions.

For each of these components, you’re going to look at four strategic questions to help you define the objectives, measurement metrics, assumptions, and specific plans of the project: What are you trying to accomplish, and why? How will you measure success? What conditions must exist? And how will you get there?

But before we dive into each of these critical questions, let’s talk about who’s going to be involved in answering them: the project stakeholders.

Involve stakeholders early

Effective stakeholder management is essential to executing your project smoothly. Begin by bringing the key players on board early; this will build the commitment that’s critical for success.

To do this, identify all your project stakeholders – including customers and end-users. Also consider the project team members, sponsors, participating organizations, vendors, gatekeepers controlling needed resources, and even opponents or potential blockers.

What conditions need to exist?

Every project rests on assumptions – those pesky, uncertain external factors. But assumptions often go unacknowledged, sinking progress when they fail. Answering the third question, “What conditions must exist?” helps prevent unexpected surprises by bringing any hidden risks to light.

Let’s be clear: assumptions always exist, whether they’re verified or not. So make those implicit assumptions explicit! Articulate and document them to avoid preventable disappointments stemming from vague or faulty definitions. When you invest time upfront to identify and validate the key assumptions your strategy relies on, you’ll save time later. Look for anything that’s potentially deal-breaking – and address it early on.

How will you get there?

With your strategy set, the next step is detailing exactly how you’re going to bridge objectives to on-the-ground action. Asking the final strategic question – “How will you get there?” – brings focus to your execution efforts.

Begin by breaking the project into logical phases, or chunks, and naming and framing each one. Plan near-term chunks in detail while outlining more distant chunks at a higher level. For example, the detailed plan for Phase 1 might contain 25 tasks, while Phase 2 has 10 placeholder tasks. This focuses resources where they’re needed today while scoping future work.

Adapting with learning cycles

In this final section, we’re going to talk about flexibility – because, let’s face it, reality often deviates from even the best-laid plans. This is where strategic learning cycles come in. Building in a way that allows you to continuously monitor, review, and evaluate progress means you can easily make adjustments – and keep projects nimble and relevant.

Monitoring helps you understand your tactical progress: Are you on track to produce the outputs as planned? It focuses on translating activities into deliverables, and managing the budget and schedule.

Key ideas in Strategic Project Management Made Simple