In the last few decades, many influential companies have adopted strategic planning as a way to help them chart paths to success, especially in the long run. All this knowledge can be transformed and your best practices can be used in some way in project management.
Those responsible for planning have great expertise in analyzing the market as a whole, being able to assess the broader impact on the decisions they make. This knowledge has been increasingly used, especially in online project management.
Continue here to learn more about this relationship and how these activities can make a difference in the success of your projects!
What is strategic planning and online project management?
These concepts are quite distinct and it is important to understand the differences:
Strategic planning
It is an organizational management activity used to define priorities, concentrate energy and resources and strengthen the operations of a business, in order to align expectations and put the entire company on the path to a common goal.
It also has the function of ensuring that employees and other stakeholders work each with their responsibilities, but in an integrated manner, knowing that the activities of some are interdependent with those of the others.
It is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does and why it does, with a focus on the future.
Effective strategic planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it is successful.
From a strategic planning process comes a plan, which is a document used to formalize and communicate the entire organization about what are the goals that are intended to be achieved, as well as what are the levers that must be developed to achieve the expected result and all other critical elements involved.
Project management
Project management is about applying knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to develop activities that can meet the defined requirements. Every project is a temporary and unique effort, aiming to produce a certain result of interest.
According to the PMI , “the project is necessarily temporary, as it has a defined beginning and end in time, which, therefore, defines the scope and resources. And it is unique in that it is not a routine operation, but a specific set of operations designed to achieve a single objective.
Thus, a project team usually includes people who do not normally work together – sometimes from different organizations and from different geographic regions ”.
In other words, project management deals with the administration of all these issues, aiming at delivering results on time, within the budget, internalizing the lessons learned that are important for organizations.
How do these concepts relate?
Projects are a way of implementing the initiatives foreseen in a strategic plan. In other words, projects are the concrete actions that a company takes to carry out what was defined in the planning.
For example, during strategic planning, directors may see a weakness in a competitor that they could exploit to win more customers.
As a result, the company may launch a new advertising campaign to address this deficiency. In this case, the advertising campaign is a project carried out as a result of the strategic planning process.
Once the strategic plan is established, there is a critical element related to project management. It is about identifying which projects will be prioritized, in order to guarantee success in the execution of each strategy.
Those defined as high priority must have access to adequate resources, as they are certainly the ones that have the most impacts and can even influence others. This requires a lot of engagement and commitment on the part of managers and the team.
The high level of involvement of those responsible for strategic planning and, consequently, for projects, increases the level of interest of employees and puts everyone on the same path, in search of growth and continuous development. It is a virtuous cycle that moves the company in the right direction.
Why use an Online Project Planning System?
It is a great challenge to be able to plan all your organization’s online activities. The use of tools for project management has significant impacts on the execution of the strategic plan. Planning and organizing the project, even before it started, is a fundamental step.
With a SaaS system that allows the planning of online activities, you can count on the support of resources such as schedules, reports, various graphs and charts and checklists available. This simplifies work and keeps you more organized. After tasks are delegated to team members, you can follow up on activities to ensure that nothing is wrong.
In addition, there is a centralization of information, giving a clear view of the activities that need to be completed to achieve the project objectives and the resources that are available. That is, it improves the decision-making process, helping to carry out the next stages of the project.
By using online project management tools , you can ensure that everyone understands the projects in which they are involved. Real-time updates and delivery status help you monitor progress and let you know if any tasks or activities require immediate attention with notification and reminder features.
This also influences the communication process with the teams. Although team members are assigned individual delegated tasks, each of these activities is part of a larger picture. The software that allows the planning of these activities online promotes collaboration, as it provides a space where colleagues can share files, provide status updates and communicate on any specific subject.
An online project management software provides the structure for everything to happen in another organized and well-maintained way. It gives you space to ensure that not only is your team happy to accompany your work, but fundamentally that management’s expectations regarding strategic planning are met.
Artia is a system that allows you to manage your activities , increasing productivity, allowing for more simplified planning, improving workflow, increasing collaboration between managers and teams and giving more visibility to the progress and compliance with the schedule .
