Sustainable strategic alignment of actual project portfolio execution: Application and exploratory case study

Although “sustainability” is most often used to describe environmental and energy issues, this paper asserts that one of the greatest threats to sustainability in any form is the failure of organizational strategies, policies, and initiatives to translate into actual project execution and work results that are consistent with those ideals. This paper discusses this gap between strategic priorities and actual project execution, and considers the concept as well as proposes a measurement of “strategic alignment” that facilitates more sustainable alignment of project portfolio execution. I provide the initial mathematical and practical justification for a simple measure of the degree to which actual project work in a project portfolio “aligns” with strategic priorities. A case study is reported to illustrate the practical utility and elegance of the approach.