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This article reports on the use of techniques in strategic project management from a survey of the UK oil and gas sector. The article then proposes portfolios of techniques to support successful strategic project management. The portfolios are developed out of previously reported research into the process of strategic project management which uncovered a set of elements that explain successful project management.

This article reports on a survey of managers in the UK oil and gas sector of their use of techniques in strategic project management. The article then builds on previously reported research to identify portfolios of techniques which appear to support successful strategic project management. Strategic projects represent the core of corporate growth, change and wealth creation. They are major investments, often involving high uncertainty; they comprise intangible benefits and promise attractive long-term financial outcomes (Buckley, 1998). Strategic projects also motivate the creation, acquisition and development of competencies (Foss, 1997), comprise a collection of diverse options (Amram and Kulatilaka, 1999), and must be conducted in a changeable, uncertain and complex environment (Kaplan and Norton, 1992 and Partington, 2000). Here, strategic project management comprises two main stages: evaluation and control. This is based on Amram and Kulatilaka’s (1999) taxonomy and has a clear alignment with classifications proposed by a number of authors in the project management field (Ward and Chapman, 1995, Chapman, 1997, Dawson, 2000, Murray-Webster and Thiry, 2000 and Turner, 2000). Evaluation involves framing (i.e. drawing up a strategic project after its initial conception), planning and valuing a strategic project, and ends with its authorisation (or not). Control comprises the management, review and redesign of a strategic project through to its completion. A precursor stage involves generating possible projects. Although this is an important and interesting stage, this research focuses only on the evaluation and control of those projects adopted for implementation. In this study, the set of elements involved in the strategic project management process are divided into context elements, content elements and outputs ( Pettigrew, 1997 and Dyson and O’Brien, 1998). While the first two categories focus on the description of the strategic project management process and its interrelationships with context and content, the third focuses broadly on the achievement of results. A key concept in the strategic project management process is the ‘critical factor’ or ‘critical element’. Critical elements should receive constant and careful attention from management, because they drive the organisation to focus attention on the success of the project in hand. According to the Pareto rule, which separates “the important few from the trivial many” (Clarke, 1999), if attention is paid to sets of critical elements and their interactions, success is more likely. It is conjectured therefore that there is a set of critical elements that explain a strategic project’s success. This proposed set of critical elements is central to this research study and are referred to as ‘success elements’. The above discussion motivated the formulation of the question “What are the success elements and the role of techniques in facilitating successful strategic project management?” In order to answer this question an investigation into the strategic project management process in the UK upstream oil and gas sector was undertaken. This paper is divided into eight sections. The next section summarises the main findings of previously reported research undertaken in the upstream oil and gas sector, on success elements for strategic project management, and management attention. Sections 3 and 4 introduce the techniques and highlight their use and importance in strategic project management according to the respondents of a survey. Sections 5 and 6 develop portfolios of techniques to facilitate strategic project evaluation and control. Section 7 discusses some insights into successful strategic project

The current paper reviews the methodology and main findings of a survey undertaken in the UK upstream oil and gas sector, and proposes and validates sets of techniques to support, respectively, successful strategic project evaluation and control. The proposed sets of techniques are general and comprehensive instruments, which combine a variety of the most frequently used techniques with recently developed techniques in order to tackle most of the elements involved in successful strategic project management. These portfolios are applicable for different categories of strategic projects, types and sizes of companies, and levels of decision-making. They are theoretically supported, aligned with managerial needs for application, build a bridge among process elements and outputs involved in strategic project management, and act as success facilitators in the evaluation stage and formally address success in the control stage. The proposed sets include recently developed techniques, which are often complex and not yet mature instruments. These techniques cannot be simply imposed, as, according to the assessment sheets, managers resist adopting new procedures and need to develop a practical understanding of these techniques. In the first instance recently developed techniques might be introduced in a more qualitative way – ‘a way of thinking’, as suggested by Schoemaker, 1995 and Amram and Kulatilaka, 1999, in order to reduce managerial scepticism. Some authors propose the adoption of a combination of options thinking, resource-based thinking and strategic thinking as part of a new paradigm for proactively managing strategic projects. According to Leslie and Michaels, 1997 and Amram and Kulatilaka, 1999, options thinking supports a firm’s ability to scan both market and product information in order to leverage an option’s value, i.e., make an option value more than the price paid to get or generate it. It also advocates that pre-emptive investments discourage potential entrants by restricting their payoffs as a result of impacting the market structure and by strengthening the proprietary nature of options (Buckley, 1998). The identification of success elements such as flexibility, learning, innovative routines, organisational adaptability and employee development aligns with the resource-based thinking which claims that a firm must be adaptive and generative, and dynamically develop inimitable resources and competencies supported by managerial involvement, commitment and leadership (Buckley, 1998, Foss, 1997 and Grant, 1998). Inimitable resources and competencies represent a firm’s ‘crown jewels’ (Grant, 1998), and they are responsible for identifying, acquiring, sustaining and renewing a firm’s competitive position in order to allow a firm to win superior rents ( Foss, 1997 and Grant, 1998). According to Schoemaker, 1992, Schoemaker, 1995 and Bunn and Salo, 1993, strategic thinking identifies core competencies to be developed or co-opted as a way of leading to more innovative developments. These core competencies, which must be continuously aligned with a firm’s mission and goals, should be the most robust and synergistic competencies, i.e. those that permeate diverse possible futures and multiple strategic segments in order to enable a firm to create value. Research directions might include the role of knowledge management in the management of strategic projects, the role of techniques in conceiving strategic projects and link successful strategic project management to a firm’s success. Finally a research direction is motivated by the conflict between, on the one hand, the managerial disregard for the applicability of recently developed techniques which promise a project’s success and, on the other hand, the managerial claim to be managing their strategic projects successfully without their use. An interesting research project would involve a comparison of the performance of firms which apply the recent and complex techniques with those that do not.