Alignment during Preproject Planning

Many projects suffer when project participants are in disagreement as to the proper success emphasis or goals for the project. These differences in success emphasis are a result of poor team alignment. Alignment can be defined as the condition where appropriate project participants are working within acceptable tolerances to develop and meet a uniformly defined and understood set of project objectives. This paper outlines a recent exploratory research study aimed at identifying the important characteristics of alignment during the preproject phase of industrial capital projects. Included in this paper are a description of alignment, its relationship to the project team and corporate project approach, and its key drivers. Through workshops, interviews and project-specific data collection, 10 critical alignment issues were identified. A composite alignment effort index demonstrated a positive, measurable effect on the performance measure of a sample of 20 capital projects. Conclusions and implications for project management professionals are given based on the findings.