A two-way influence between business strategy and project management

This article recognizes the strategic importance of project management (PM) in the corporate world through an exploration of PM/business strategy alignment. Using a case-study methodology, we extensively examined eight case studies covering nine projects in seven organizations. As a result, an empirically based theoretical framework was developed to address the configuration of PM as influenced by the business strategy (and vice versa). We found that business strategy realizes its influence on PM via the competitive attributes of the business strategy (time-to-market, quality, cost). These competitive attributes are used deliberately to determine the configuration and emphasis placed on different PM elements (e.g., strategy, organization, process, tools, metrics, culture). At the same time, PM is expected to impact the adaptation of business strategy if the operating conditions of a project detect significant threats from environmental changes (e.g., a market shift).