Implementing Strategy Through Project Management: The Importance of Managing the Project Front-end

This chapter, if it succeeds, will open wider two doors in management theory and practice: one, to show concretely how corporate and business strategy implementation can be effected via project management, something rarely addressed in the academic literature; two, to show how project management, as a discipline, can contribute to strategic management. In doing, so it should clarify the confusion which has crept into perceptions of what programme and project management are. It will illustrate the importance of work done in the project “front-end”. It will stress why value and benefits, and other measures of effectiveness may be more significant than the traditional project management efficiency measures of budget, schedule and scope attainment. And finally, it will show the importance of leadership in achieving this.