Organizations take new initiatives to satisfy the expectations of the key stakeholders. However, there is usually a missing link between the initiative and the corporate strategy. Integrating the project objectives with the corporate strategy and managing them collectively is increasingly becoming imperative for the organizations to succeed and reduce the failure rates.

Organizations invest significant amounts of time, effort and money to achieve their business objectives. However, end results usually do not meet the expectations or the business needs and objectives. This trend is more visible in software projects. Therefore, the failure rates for the software projects are significantly higher. According to The Standish Group International Inc., which specializes in tracking IT projects, around 46% of the IT projects are over budget and overdue, while 28% of the projects are total failures. Another report by the group indicated that only 24% of the projects undertaken by the Fortune 500 companies would be completed successfully.

These findings indicate the financial implications that the global economy is likely to face in the coming future. As a result, the top management in many organizations are shifting their focus more towards managing projects. While many organizations have been using project management methodology to compress their product-development cycles, reduce costs and achieve quality improvements, etc., very few organizations have succeeded in achieving the integration of business strategy and project execution. In fact, the failure of projects is more due to failure to integrate than anything else.

Despite the fact that projects convert corporate strategy into reality, many organizations fail to understand the concept of managing projects and execution. The result is the failure of organizations to implement their corporate strategy and majority of the projects exceeding budgets, failing to meet deadlines, and realize the business goals. Increase in the failure of projects has forced organizations to adopt Strategic Project Management (SPM). It can be defined as the process of managing projects strategically. By focusing on SPM, organizations establish a Strategic Project Office (SPO), which links the corporate strategy with project execution.

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