How to Create a Project Strategy in 10 Steps
A comprehensive project strategy is an essential ingredient of project success. Use our 10-step approach to ensure you cover everything, including objectives, roles, work breakdown structure, risks, and much more.
What is a Project Strategy?
A project strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines the approach, goals, resources, stakeholders, and timeline for completing a project successfully. It’s a roadmap that guides your team through the various stages of planning, execution, and evaluation.
Before creating a project strategy, you should ask the following questions.
- What are the goals/outcomes of the project?
- What is the timeline of the project? When should each task be completed?
- What is the budget for the project?
Why is creating a Project Strategy Important?
A project strategy is essential to ensure your whole project infrastructure is completely aligned on achieving the same goals. It allows you and your team to understand each step needed to complete the project successfully.
By clearly outlining each project stage and your team’s approach, every team member should understand their role.
10 Steps to Create a Project Strategy
The following 10 steps can help you create a comprehensive project strategy. By completing these steps, you and your team will have a clear understanding of what is required for project success.
1) Define Project Objectives
Defining the objectives helps everyone in the team understand the purpose of the project. Setting out these objectives will guide all subsequent planning and decision-making for the rest of the strategy.
It is important at this stage to define who is responsible for each objective, or area of the project. Each objective should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Setting SMART objectives keeps the project moving forward, helps meet deadlines, and lets you know if the people responsible are providing the output they were originally tasked with.
All project objectives should be shared with the relevant stakeholders. This allows everyone involved in the project to have complete knowledge of the project outcomes.
2) Define Roles and Responsibilities
This is a chance to identify the roles involved in the project. Stakeholders will have varying levels of responsibility and authority, and only specific stakeholders will need to be notified of every part of the process. Stakeholder groups may include:
- Project Sponsor: The project sponsor is commonly a director, CEO, or manager, who provides financial resources and support for the project. They have a vested interest in the project’s success and often hold ultimate accountability. Because of this, they will want to review and approve all elements of the plan.
- Project Manager: The project manager is responsible for planning, running, and overseeing the project. They have likely had a large input in creating the project strategy, and are the focal point of contact for stakeholders if they come across any issues. The project manager must ensure that the project stays on track, and meets every deadline.
- Project Team Members: This is the team of people who carry out the tasks set out in the project strategy. They will hand documents to the project manager to take to the project sponsor for approval.
- End Users: This is the group of people that will benefit from the outcomes of the project. Although they are typically not involved in the process, their satisfaction is essential. The project manager should keep in contact with the end users throughout the project’s operation, to ensure their expectations are met.
Learn more about the roles involved in project management here – Project Management Roles Explained
3) Develop a Scope Statement
This is arguably one of the most important parts of the project strategy. The scope statement defines the project, with all stakeholders needing to agree on the outcomes.
Clearly define the boundaries of the project by outlining what will be included (in-scope) and what will not be included (out-of-scope). A clear project scope ensures that the project stays solely focused on its objectives.
By doing this, you prevent the risk of miscommunication among stakeholders and ensure resources are directed where they are needed most. However, the scope statement need not be set in stone before work on the project begins, and can be amended as the project progresses.
4) Develop a Scope Baseline
This step directly follows the initial scope statement. The deliverables of the project need to be broken down into smaller tasks. This is known as a work breakdown structure.
The work breakdown structure should establish every single deliverable that needs to be carried out for the project to succeed. This should begin with high-level deliverables, and work its way down into smaller deliverables. The smallest and lowest-level deliverables are commonly known as work packages. Think of this as a roadmap for the project’s execution and resource allocation.
5) Create a Task Schedule and Cost Baselines
Creating your schedule is where you break down the specific tasks that need to be carried out to complete the work packages and assign a timeframe for each. You can do this by creating a work breakdown structure again, but this time for each project task, no matter how small.
When identifying each task, include the following:
- Estimated duration of task
- Resources needed to complete the task
- Estimated financial cost of the task
- Stakeholders responsible for the task
By doing this, the project manager and project sponsor can analyse if the project can be completed within the required timeline and budget.
Learn more about creating a project schedule here – How to Create a Project Management Schedule
6) Identify Project Risks
You can now use your scope baseline, task schedule, and stakeholder interests to identify and analyse the potential risks of the project. Risks are events that have a possibility of occurring and having a significant negative impact on the deliverables and objectives.
Where possible, risks should be split into high, medium, and low probability, often shown as a RAG status (red, amber, green). The potential impact of each risk should also be noted. Relevant stakeholders should be made aware of these risks, and strategies that can be used to mitigate them.
Conduct a project SWOT analysis – a framework you can use to identify risks by identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the project.
Find out how Verto can help you manage project risks here – Project Risk Management Tools
7) Analyse Competitors
This step is project dependent, but in some cases is one of the most important. Competitors may also be considered as stakeholders if your project involves market competition or industry-wide implications.
Understanding competitors’ actions and reactions can help in shaping the project strategy. This should also be monitored throughout the project, as the actions of your competitors may mean you need to adapt your project as it progresses.
8) Develop a staffing plan
Developing a staffing plan is crucial for effectively managing human resources within a project. Known as ‘resourcing’ when it comes to managing how projects will be delivered, it will show the duration each person is expected to be on the project. A resourcing plan can also include skill sets and competencies so you know you have the right team for the job.
By resourcing effectively, you can also avoid overstaffing or understaffing situations to best optimise your budget expenditure.
9) Review your Project Strategy
Now that you have put the project strategy together, you should conduct a thorough review. This is crucial for laying a strong foundation and ensuring that the project is set up for success from the outset.
This may involve meetings with the project sponsor, as ultimately they are backing the project and will want to approve the strategy before the project begins. Getting the views of stakeholders is also key here to ensure the strategy meets the requirements and interests of each party.
Learn more about getting stakeholders on-side here – The Principles of Stakeholder Management
10) Communicate your Strategy and Communications Plan
Once all stakeholders are happy with the strategy, it can be formally communicated to all relevant parties. This gives everyone a chance to voice any concerns they may have about the project strategy. Perspectives from stakeholders or team members may reveal insights, identify potential risks, or highlight opportunities for improvements in the strategy.
All stakeholders involved in the project should then be made aware of the official communications plan. This outlines how communication will be managed throughout the project lifecycle. It typically includes components such as:
- Details on project reporting, including data contents and schedules.
- Escalation procedures for communicating issues.
- Data storage and access procedures.
By developing a comprehensive communications plan, project teams can ensure that communication is clear, consistent, and tailored to the needs of stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.
Learn more about data management best practices here – How to Solve Data Management Challenges
Use Verto to Manage your Project Strategy
Once your strategy is approved and underway, you need the right tools to keep your project on track. Verto supports project managers through a wide range of tools and features, offering a cloud-based solution that encourages collaboration from wherever your teams are based. With Verto, you can:
- Track your goals and progress towards them with Benefits realisation
- Create a Gantt chart timeline of your project and plan for key milestones
- Manage task delegation and visualise progress with Kanban boards
- Help mitigate risks ahead of time and plan contingencies with Risk management tools
- Gain a birds-eye view of progress with Project dashboards tailored to your data needs
If you think these tools can help you achieve success with your project strategy, get in touch with the Verto team today, or book a demo to find out how Verto can help you.