Toward Project Strategy Typologies: Cases In Pharmaceutical Industry

As part of our continuous studies on the strategic approach to project management, this study focuses on combining the two worlds— project and business— by deriving specific and appropriate project strategies in line with business strategies or objectives. In this preliminary study, we centered our attention on the strategies of projects in pharmaceutical industry. The results of this research illustrated that project strategies existed in an implicit way and were used in managing projects for better business results. Two types of project strategies were found. One is the "Product advantage/Schedule driven strategy," which leads a project team to focus on the product quality/competitive advantage and project schedule. The other type is the "Efficiency driven strategy," focusing on the project schedule to increase the efficiency and productivity of the company. These research results are very encouraging since they are a basis for our future study on project strategy typologies. In addition they can be used in building the foundation for adding project strategic planning to traditional project planning practice, which are still focused on operations and mostly on "getting the job done."