Strategic Project Management Assignment Example

Introduction of Strategic Project Management Assignment

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Strategic project management (SPM) is considered the process which is used to link the project with the strategic plans or objectives of the organisation. SPM provides the opportunity to manage the organisational projects in a way that can allow the organisation to achieve the goals in an effective manner (Ferrer Romero, 2018). SPM is not only about strategically managing the projects; it is also about designing and managing the projects in such a manner that it can support the strategy developed for achieving the project goals. Developing the plans and policies for achieving the objectives of the project and then allocating the resources for implementing the plans is the main job of strategic project management, and it is used by the organisations for achieving competitive advantage over other organisations in the market.

About the organisation and project overview

This section of the report will provide an idea about the organisation as well as the major project on which the organisation is working to further ensure better organisational results.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)

In the year 2018, RBS developed a team that will be concentrated on improving the organisation's operational efficiency and achieving the objectives of the project. This major project had two essential aims which are needed to be achieved by the organisation for achieving the goals strategically.

Objective of the project

There are six objectives of this major project; the achievement of these six objectives will help the organisation to measure the success of this initiative. All six projects are listed below:

• To reduce the funding approvals from multiple governing bodies to a single governing body with the help of a digitalised tool.
• To reduce the cycle times, which will ensure quick delivery of the value to the customers.
• To shorten the cycle times, which will help them to approve the scoping.
• The documentation required for funding approval will be reduced to one from three.
• Immediate project kick-offs, for completing the funding procedure in 24 hours rather than completing it in 2 weeks.

It is observed that all the objectives and this major project aimed to deliver the best and easiest services to the customers, and this is the reason it was very essential for the organisation to develop a strategic management approach that will help the organisation to achieve the respective goals effectively.

Strategic Project Management (SPM)

The SPM provides an organisation with an idea about how the project will benefit the organisation. This process aligns the business strategies and the project management methods and techniques together to help the organisation achieve the goals of the organisation in an effective manner (Jebrin, 2018). This section of the report will provide the idea about the ways through which the Royal Bank of Scotland used the strategic management approach to deliver the best results for achieving the organisational objectives.

Planning

The deliverable of this project will impose transformations in the organisation's operating system, as well as transform the services which the organisation was offering to its patients. RBS observed that it is not an easy task to deliver this transformation, and this is the reason the organisation reached out to its project management team, which is termed as the "Change Centre of Excellence Team", and the vision was very much clear for the team. The vision was to make the organisation the industry leader in customer service, trust and advocacy by the end of the year 2020. With a clear aim and objective in the head, the team decided to plan the way of execution.

The project management team adopted a new project management approach. As it is observed that simplification is one of the top core values of the bank, the team decided to use the Lean-Agile approach, which was aligned with the core values of the bank, as it will also ensure that the organisation can run its initiatives in a smooth manner (McArthur & Bortoluzzi, 2018). With the help of the Lean-Agile management approach, the organisation decided to first provide the internal customers with fast and smooth services by focusing on:

• Continuous innovative planning
• Continuous delivery of the services
• Continuous improvement of the services

To plan for the strategic project management, the project handling team of the Royal Bank of Scotland decided to limit the data collection due to excessive documentation, as the services are getting slower for the customers, which is affecting the reputation and the customer retention of the organisation. Incorporating strategic marketing, the team aims to improve service efficiency and enhance customer satisfaction.

The project management team of RBS also developed an “Idea-to-value” blueprint based on the SAFe, which will ensure that the team will apply the lean portfolio principles with the help of the Agile and traditional methods.

Created a two-week feedback loop which will release a prototype of the services and help the organisation to gain feedback from the internal customers of the organisation, and it will also help them to achieve the objectives of the organisation (Zolfaghari et al. 2017). These are the planning steps of the strategic project management of the organisation.

Business and operation analysis

One of the key considerations of strategic project management and planning is to understand the internal strengths and weaknesses and the external opportunities and threats; these are commonly termed the SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis of the Royal Bank of Scotland is displayed below:

Table 1: SWOT analysis

(Source: Created by self)

Key Performance Indicators

The key performance indicators refer to a set of quantifiable measurements which will help to analyse the financial and operational performances of the Royal Bank of Scotland in the past few years. It is observed that the best results are observed when one organisation is compared with the other operating in the same sector. One of the key performance indicators is the adequacy approach, which indicates that RBS has been one of the organisations which have been highly able to mitigate the impacts of the losses (Maklan et al. 2017). The number of assets of the organisation has decreased in the past two years, which indicates that the organisation is losing its financial conditioning in the market. This is also a performance indicator that provides the idea about this financial institution. The banking operations are going smoothly, and the involvement of the top-level management in the new major project “I Want Funding” indicates the activeness of the top-level management and the stakeholders, which is also one of the key performance indicators.

Table 2: RBS’s value of total loans, net interest income, total assets, and total loss from the years 2009-2019

Leading

Leadership is one of the most important aspects of strategic project management, and for effectively achieving the strategic goals and objectives of the organisation, it needs to have the best person to lead the team and the project for achieving the best sort of results (Digalwar et al., 2020). The Royal Bank of Scotland hired Stephen Marjot as the leader of the Change Centre of Excellence team, who had a clear vision of making the financial institution the best before 2020, and this is the reason he wanted himself and everyone working for the organisation to be very flexible and stay involved in the work from outside of the departmental silos. The Lean-Agile management approach has been used by the leader of the organisation for achieving the project requisites (Maqbool et al. 2017).

Project management tools

The use of project management tools provides the organisation with the opportunity for the teams to communicate and visualise their goals and plans (Kerzner, 2019). The project management team used some of the tools for effectively managing this project, like the use of the Gantt charts, mind maps, visual timelines, and process flows.

Table 3: Gantt chart of the “I Want Funding” project

(Source: Created by self)

Figure 1: Process flow chart of the project management “I Want Funding” project

(Source: Created by self)

These are some of the project management tools which were used by the project management team of the Royal Bank of Scotland for initiation and implementation of the “I Want Funding” project (Radujkovi? & Sjekavica, 2017).

Possible outcomes of the strategic project management approaches

Recommendations

Despite the achievements of the project management, there are various things which the organisation needs to keep out of their way, as observed in the SWOT analysis, that there are several threats which the organisation has while operating in this competitive environment, and this is the reason few recommendations are made which can help RBS in the future.

• It is recommended that RBS should use project management software for effectively achieving the strategic objectives of the organisation, like Scoro and Proofhub, which will help RBS to combine the project tasks with the objectives of the project and get the best results (Papke-Shields & Boyer-Wright, 2017).
• The increase in the technology indicates that the organisation is recommended to use digital channels for conducting banking-related tasks, which will ensure a single communication channel with the customers, and it will be easier for the customers to fulfil their requirements within a very short period.

Conclusion

This report concludes that the RSB's strategic vision and the innovative techniques used by the project management team of the organisation can have positive impacts on the organisation's customer service experiences and will deliver the transformation. This report also concludes that collaborating the strategic planning tools with the management team will be able to reduce the operational risks and will also enable the use of the IT tools in the organisational operation for better achievement of the goals and objectives of the firm. This also indicates that the organisation can achieve the target without even asking for a different or special budget for the project.

References

• Digalwar, A., Raut, R. D., Yadav, V. S., Narkhede, B., Gardas, B. B., & Gotmare, A. (2020). Evaluation of critical constructs for measurement of sustainable supply chain practices in lean? agile firms of Indian origin: A hybrid ISM/ANP approach. Business Strategy and the Environment, 29(3), 1575-1596.
• Ferrer Romero, E. F. (2018). Strategic project management: a methodology for sustainable competitive advantage. Revista EAN, (spe), 15-31.
• Jebrin, A. H. (2018). Integration between project management and strategic approach theory. International Journal of Advances in Agriculture Sciences.
• Kerzner, H. (2019). Using the project management maturity model: strategic planning for project management. John Wiley & Sons.
• Maklan, S., Antonetti, P., & Whitty, S. (2017). A better way to manage customer experience: Lessons from the Royal Bank of Scotland. California Management Review, 59(2), 92-115.
• Maqbool, R., Sudong, Y., Manzoor, N., & Rashid, Y. (2017). The impact of emotional intelligence, project managers’ competencies, and transformational leadership on project success: An empirical perspective. Project Management Journal, 48(3), 58-75.
• McArthur, J. J., & Bortoluzzi, B. (2018). Lean-Agile FM-BIM: a demonstrated approach. Facilities.
• Papke-Shields, K. E., & Boyer-Wright, K. M. (2017). Strategic planning characteristics applied to project management. International Journal of Project Management, 35(2), 169-179.
• Radujkovi, M., & Sjekavica, M. (2017). Project management success factors. Procedia Engineering,196, 607-615.
• Tornjanski, V., Marinkovic, S., & Jancic, Z. (2017). Towards sustainability: Effective operations strategies, quality management and operational excellence in banking. Amfiteatru Economic, 19(44), 79.