Managing Multiple IT Projects: Strategies to Align with Your Company’s Vision

In today's fast-paced business environment, IT departments are often tasked with managing multiple projects simultaneously. While this can be exciting and challenging, it also presents a risk: losing sight of the bigger picture. How can you ensure that each project, no matter how small or large, contributes to your company's strategic vision? Let's dive in.

1. Start with Clarity

Before you can align your projects, you need crystal-clear understanding of your company's strategic vision. This isn't just a vague mission statement – it's a concrete direction for where the company is headed and how it plans to get there.

Action step: Schedule a meeting with key stakeholders to discuss and document the company's strategic vision if it isn't already clearly defined and communicated.

2. Create a Strategic Alignment Framework

Develop a framework that allows you to evaluate each project against the strategic vision. This could include criteria such as:

- Direct contribution to strategic goals

- Indirect support of strategic initiatives

- Resource efficiency

- Risk mitigation

- Innovation potential

Action step: Design a simple scorecard that rates each project on these criteria.

3. Prioritize Ruthlessly

With limited resources, not all projects can be top priority. Use your strategic alignment framework to rank projects. Be prepared to make tough decisions – a project that doesn't align well with the strategic vision might need to be deprioritized or even cancelled.

Action step: Conduct a quarterly review of all ongoing and proposed projects, scoring them against your alignment framework.

4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Ensure that every team member understands not just what they're doing, but why they're doing it. How does their project fit into the bigger picture? This understanding can boost motivation and help team members make better day-to-day decisions.

Action step: Include a "strategic alignment" section in project kickoff meetings and regular status updates.

5. Stay Agile

Your company's strategic vision may evolve over time, and your projects should evolve with it. Build in regular checkpoints to reassess project alignment and make course corrections as needed.

Action step: Implement a bi-annual strategic alignment review for all ongoing projects.

6. Leverage Technology

Use project management and portfolio management tools that allow you to track strategic alignment across multiple projects. Many modern tools include features for linking projects to strategic objectives.

Action step: Evaluate your current project management tools. Do they support strategic alignment tracking? If not, research alternatives.

7. Foster Cross-Project Synergies

Look for opportunities where projects can support each other in furthering the strategic vision. This might involve shared resources, complementary outcomes, or sequential dependencies.

Action step: Create a visual map of how your projects interconnect and support the overall strategy.

8. Measure and Report on Strategic Impact

Develop KPIs that measure not just project success, but strategic impact. Report on these regularly to keep strategic alignment at the forefront of everyone's mind.

Action step: For each project, define at least one KPI that directly measures its contribution to the strategic vision.

Conclusion

Juggling multiple IT projects is a complex task, but by keeping your company's strategic vision at the center of your project management approach, you can ensure that every effort contributes to the bigger picture. Remember, it's not about doing more – it's about doing what matters most.

By implementing these strategies, you'll not only improve the strategic alignment of your IT projects but also elevate the perceived value of your IT department within the organization. In today's digital-first world, IT isn't just a support function – it's a key driver of strategic success.