Best Practices for Aligning Projects with Corporate Strategic Objectives in the Financial Technology Industry

Abstract

Project managers and corporate executives often misalign projects with strategic business objectives, causing project challenges and leading to project failures. This qualitative inquiry study aimed to explore the perspectives of project managers and senior executives in the U.S. Financial Technology (FinTech) industry regarding best practices for aligning projects with a company's strategic business objectives. Four senior corporate FinTech managers and four FinTech project managers who worked in the mergers and acquisitions and venture capital segments and had at least three years of experience in the FinTech industry were interviewed for this study. Four themes emerged from the thematic analysis and inductive coding process. Theme 1, alignment process models are methodologies of tools, techniques, and approaches for aligning projects with strategic objectives. Theme 2, knowledge sharing, is used for communicating organizational information regarding strategic objectives. Theme 3, alignment competencies, are the skills used to align the project with the organization's strategic objectives. Theme 4, project manager's awareness, is the project manager's consciousness of an organization's strategic objectives and attentiveness to those objectives. The four themes could be used to help improve FinTech senior corporate managers' and project managers' practice of aligning projects with a company's strategic business objectives. These themes might assist in reducing the probability of project misalignment while effectively aligning projects with strategic objectives.