Strategic Project Management Assignment Sample

Introduction of Strategic Project Management Assignment

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Strategic project management (SPM) is considered as the process which is used to link the project with the strategic plans or objectives of the organization. SPM provides the opportunity to manage the organizational projects in a way that can allow the organization 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 organizations for achieving competitive advantage over other organizations in the market.

About Organization and Project overview

This section of the report will provide an idea about the organization as well as the major project on which the organization is working to further ensuring better organizational results.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)

In the year 2018, RBS developed a team that will be concentrated on improving the organization's operational efficiency and achieve the objectives of the project. This major project had two essential aims which are needed to be achieved by the organization 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 organization to measure the success of this initiative. All the six projects are listed below:

• To reduce the funding approvals from multiple governing bodies to a single governing body with the help of a digitalized 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 with 24-hours rather than completing it in 2-weeks.

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

Strategic Project Management (SPM)

The SPM provides an organization with an idea about how the project will benefit the organization. This process aligns the business strategies and the project management methods and techniques together to help the organization achieve the goals of the organization 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 organizational objectives.

Planning

The deliverable of this project will impose transformations in the organization's operating system as well as it will also transform the services which the organization was offering to its patients. RBS observed that it is not an easy task to deliver this transformation and this is the reason the organization 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 organization 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 organization can run its initiatives in a smooth manner (McArthur & Bortoluzzi, 2018). With the help of the Lean-Agile management approach the organization 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 are affecting the reputation and the customer retention of the organization.

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 organization to gain feedback from the internal customers of the organization and it will also help them to achieve the objectives of the organization (Zolfaghari et al. 2017). These are the planning steps of the strategic project management of the organization.

Business and operation analysis

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

Strengths: · One of the oldest retail and commercial banks in Scotland, England and Wales, and Ireland. · It has a very strong base of reliable suppliers for the availability of raw materials. · Highly skilled workers through successful training and program. · Strong free cash flow that helps the company to purchase resources for expanding new projects.	Weaknesses: · The profitability ratio, as well as the net contribution % of the Royal Bank of Scotland, is below the industry average. · Lack of new technologies involved and need more investments in new technologies. · Limited success outside the core businesses · The investment in research and development is very less than other fastest-growing organizations in the industry.
Opportunities: · The decreasing cost of transportation because of the lower shipping prices is an opportunity to boost productivity. · Stable free cash flow is an opportunity to invest in the adjacent product. · A lower inflation rate will bring more stability to the market which will enable credit at a lower interest.	Threats: · The rise in the pay levels of the employees. · New technologies are developed in the market and being used by the competitors. · The changing behavior of the consumers and the use of the online channel is one of the biggest threats.

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 analyze 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 organization 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 organizations which have been highly able to mitigate the impacts of the losses (Maklan et al. 2017). The number of assets of the organization has decreased in the past two years which indicates that the organization 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 year 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 organization 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 organization to be very much flexible and stay involved in the working from outside of the departmental silos. The Lean-Agile management approach has been used by the leader of the organization for achieving the project requisites (Maqbool et al. 2017).

Project management tools

The use of project management tools provides the organization with the opportunity for the teams to communicate and visualize 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.

Project activity	1st week	2nd week	3rd week	4th week	5th week	6th week	7th week
Identification of the issues	ü
Developing the project plan		ü
Analyzing the project steps			ü
Business and operation analysis				ü	ü
Analyzing the previous performances				ü	ü
Selection of the strategies						ü
Application of the strategies						ü
Observing and listening to the feedbacks							ü

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 organization has to needs to keep out of their way as observed in the SWOT analysis that there are several threats which the organization have while operating in this competitive environment and this is the reason few recommendations are made which can help RBS in future.

• It is recommended that RBS should use project management software for effectively achieving the strategic objectives of the organization 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 organization 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 fulfill 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 organization can have positive impacts on the organization's customer service experiences and will be delivered 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 ale enable the use of the IT tools in the organizational operation for better achievement of the goals and objectives of the firm. This also indicates that the organization 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 theoretical. 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.