We categorize the opportunities according to the nature of their benefit. Will the project allow the company to merely "stay in the race", or will it create competitive advantage. Perhaps it promises "game-changing" innovation. There are circumstances that could make any of those benefits ideal at a particular time; we look for that alignment to current business strategy in our selection.

Recently, we applied this analysis to a $US35 billion plus global technology company. The opportunity portfolio developed comprised more than thirty projects that were identified, quantified, and categorized. Aligning to the business strategy, we filtered the data by two criteria: Did the proposed project improve current capabilities by reducing costs or improving efficiencies? or Did it advance the company toward desired future outcomes? From the results, we opted to present to senior management an opportunity that had the highest ROI, produced a major cost reduction, and created competitive advantage.

With the strategy determined and project selected, align the other key elements of your company - the people, processes, and IT systems. Aligning people is a motivational issue and company leadership must engage the team and ask questions. Provide a clear goal, and develop an execution plan from the team's input, but motivate and empower the team to take the plan and run with it.

People are aligned above the project team as well. Everyone touched by the transformed or enhanced processes and systems must be on board with the program. Prepare for the deployment with training and testing on new processes and systems. People should anticipate the changes the project will make.

Aligning processes and systems to business strategy must be approached separately, yet they are tightly interlinked. Processes must drive the strategy, and systems must support and deliver those processes. Create separate business and IT teams to assess the opportunity. Each proposes solutions and the business analyst merges the ideas to develop a transformational plan that can be managed to deliver the promise.

The business team begins by defining all components of the process. Working with the business sponsors, the project's scope and goals are formulated. All participating organizations, internal and external are identified, as are all systems involved in both development and production cycles. The project's scope and boundaries are detailed, and systems for tracking and storing project data are designed.

They drill through process workflows to align process design points, cross-process integration, and project priorities and accountabilities with business strategy. Process maps, dashboards, and scorecards reflect and support the project goals. End users are engaged through requirements gathering workshops, surveys, and so on, and business user interfaces are developed for workstations and PDAs.