Page 326 - Global Project Management Handbook

SUCCESS FACTORS IN VIRTUAL GLOBAL SOFTWARE PROJECTS 16-13

of the project with those of the strategy. With the business strategy and the alignment
process in place, what remains is to achieve the alignment.

CSF1 CSF2

Critical Success Factor (CSF) 1: Defining a Clear Business Strategy. Companies in
the virtual global software business should have a clear business strategy that reflects
who they are and how they intend to outplay their rivals. Once formulated in this man-
ner, the strategy must be turned into simple, understandable terms and communicated
to project people, such as product roadmaps with the timeline for new software prod-
ucts. In addition, speed to market for each of the products must be defined, along with
the product’s feature set, customers to target, and expected revenue and profitability.
Accompanying this expression of the strategy is a clearly established set of priorities,
whose implementation is expected to help the strategy’s execution. Says one vice presi-
dent of a global virtual software company in charge of the strategy:

We want all project managers to understand our business strategy and to work on their
projects to make it happen. Therefore, we translated our relatively high-level strategy and
product roadmap into a set of strategic priorities for our business. In particular, these pri-
orities are in four areas:
Customer expectations
Functionality
Ease of use
Service
Customer support
Time to market
Quality
Reliable products
Integration
Best-of-breed strategy
Business results
Sustainable competitive advantage
Being the leader in the market
Getting customers
Financial indicators
Return on investment (ROI)
Market share
Profitability
We spend an enormous amount of time communicating these priorities to VGS project
managers. Of course, we rate for them the importance of each priority, so they have a
clear picture of what strategically matters to us.
CSF2: Achieving the Alignment. To ensure that the VGS projects are selected and
executed in such a way that they support the business strategy, an alignment process—
formal or informal—has to be established. Its purpose is straightforward: to help to
align the VGS projects with the organization’s business strategy and its priorities as
described in the section “Defining a Clear Business Strategy” above. Each project is
put through a planning process to achieve this alignment. As the project implementation