By The PMO Squad
October 30, 2024
Strategic planning is a pivotal moment for organizations, providing an opportunity to review, assess market conditions, and set a course for the coming year. It’s a time when leadership aligns on vision, goals, and key priorities.
As strategic planning kicks off, it’s crucial for project delivery teams to come prepared with insights that will help shape the organization’s project delivery roadmap. For the next planning cycle, the following aspects are key to driving successful project delivery and long-term organizational results:
1. Project Resource Demands
As project portfolios grow, so does the demand for specialized skills. Assess the gaps in your current team’s capabilities and consider the following:
- Skill requirements: Does the team have the right blend of skills to execute next year’s projects? With many companies moving towards digital transformation, you may need talent skilled in specialized areas.
- Succession planning: For teams with senior talent, it’s important to identify potential leaders and ensure knowledge transfer, ensuring that new projects aren’t delayed due to personnel changes.
- Workforce scaling: If you foresee major projects requiring additional resources, start planning how to onboard new talent. Should you hire full-time, contract, or temporary staff?
2. Consulting Partners or Third-Party Technology
As projects become more complex, the integration of third-party technologies or consulting expertise can be the deciding factor between success and failure. When planning for next year, consider:
- Consulting firms: Some initiatives may require expertise that your organization doesn’t have in-house. Whether it’s for digital transformation or standardization of today’s processes, consulting partners can provide expertise and scale that’s difficult to maintain internally. The cost of investing in this type of partnership is bound to provide quick returns in time and cost savings down the road.
- Technology: Identify whether there are areas where third-party tools could provide a strategic advantage. The toolset your organization leverages is only as good as the usage and adoption of the tool itself. Review how the team is utilizing the toolsets at hand and how potential optimizations can be applied into next year including gaps in technology that can improve organizational delivery.
3. The Organization’s Project Delivery Components
Strategic planning doesn’t happen in a vacuum—it requires a comprehensive review of your entire organization. As project delivery teams provide input, they must focus on:
- People: Beyond adding team members, consider the training and development needed to keep existing staff engaged and productive. Project teams should look ahead to what capabilities will be critical for project delivery.
- Processes: Evaluate your current processes to identify inefficiencies. Consider evaluating all organizational processes not just those that stand alone in project delivery. The organizational feedback loop is what drive better organizational project delivery down the road.
- Technology: Technology should be an enabler, not a barrier, to achieving business goals. Assess whether your current tools support your long-term strategy. This may include reviewing project management software, resource management tools, or other key platforms that your teams rely on daily.
As your organization prepares for 2025 strategic planning sessions, make sure to tap into the full potential of your PMO and consider the partnerships, people, processes, and technology that will be critical to driving success in the coming year.
In doing so, you can create a roadmap that not only looks great on paper but is also achievable in delivering better results for your organization!
The PMO Squad
The PMO Squad started in 2013 by global PMO Influencer Joe Pusz, PMO Joe. Joe had been a PMO Leader with various organizations across multiple industries and various size companies during his corporate career. The entrepreneurial spirit prompted Joe to start The PMO Squad to help serve clients looking to improve their Project Management capabilities and performance.
