Improving organisational strategic success:

1  By extending existing internal

project management capabilities

COMMENTARY

By Alan Stretton, PhD (Hon)

New Zealand

INTRODUCTION

This is the first of two articles under the broad title of “Improving organisational strategic success”, which look at extending existing roles of project management to help this process. This first article is concerned with potential for extending existing internal project management (PM) capabilities to help achieve strategic success. The second article will be concerned with potential for expanding externally delivered project management services to help achieve such success.

This article will first look at some attributes of organisational strategies, noting that they are largely implemented via projects, but that a high percentage of them fail. We will then look at causes of such failures, which are related to the five stages of an organisational strategic management framework, as recorded in one of my previous articles. These will essentially form a core reference point for following discussions.

Turning to links with existing internal PM capabilities, the latter are so varied that we need to find a reasonably representative type of such capability. We propose that Project Management Offices (PMOs) would appear to be the most representative candidates, particularly in view of their increasing prominence in many organisations. We then discuss a recent contention that there is a high level of poor recognition of the strategic value of PMOs by top-level management in many organisations.

This will lead us to look at four recorded causes of strategic failure which are attributed to top-level management deficiencies. By far the most important of these is the separation of strategy formulation (‘choosing’) from implementation (‘doing’). We will look at problems with translating strategic intentions into the “right” actions for success, and discuss Nieto-Rodriguez’s proposal for a Chief Project Officer (CPO) to address this issue. This can be seen as a very substantial extension of usual PMO ranges of activities, and I will describe this as a CPO-led PMO role. This role, and its link to helping resolve the above “separation” cause of failure, will be illustrated in the context of the basic organisational strategic management framework

We will then go on to look at three other cause-of-failure groups recorded in Figure 1 where CPO-led PMOs should also help. These relate directly to the causes of failure in Stages 2, 3 and 5 of the strategic management framework, and there appear to be ample opportunities for this extended form of project-related help to further contribute.

Finally, we take a brief look at some apparent impediments to extending the scope of CPO-led PMOs, and Priena’s emphasis on the relevance of cognitive issues.

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How to cite this work: Stretton, A. (2026).  Improving organisational strategic success: 1. By extending existing internal project management capabilities, Commentary, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue VIII, August. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/pmwj167-Aug2026-Stretton-Improving-org-strategic-success-1.pdf

About the Author

Alan Stretton, PhD     

Life Fellow, AIPM (Australia)
Auckland, New Zealand

Alan Stretton is one of the pioneers of modern project management.  In 2006 he retired from a position as Adjunct Professor of Project Management in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, which he joined in 1988 to develop and deliver a Master of Project Management program.   Prior to joining UTS, Mr. Stretton worked in the building and construction industries in Australia, New Zealand and the USA for some 38 years, which included the project management of construction, R&D, introduction of information and control systems, internal management education programs and organizational change projects.  Alan has degrees in Civil Engineering (BE, Tasmania) and Mathematics (MA, Oxford), and an honorary PhD in strategy, programme and project management (ESC, Lille, France).  Alan was Chairman of the Standards (PMBOK) Committee of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) from late 1989 to early 1992.  He held a similar position with the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) and was elected a Life Fellow of AIPM in 1996.  He was a member of the Core Working Group in the development of the Australian National Competency Standards for Project Management.  He has published 280+ professional articles and papers.  Alan can be contacted at alanailene@bigpond.com .

To see more works by Alan Stretton, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at http://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/alan-stretton/.