Strategy to Delivery – the gap we all seem to treat as invisible

Some time ago, I ran a session with colleagues from the APM Governance Interest Network exploring a proposition that “strategy to projects” is far less straightforward than many organisations assume.

The response was significant:

• over 400 participants
• more than 500 contributions
• and repeated evidence of the same underlying issue.

We explored six recurring themes:

• communication
• cascade of objectives
• prioritisation and competing workloads
• metrics establishment
• support capability
• and information and data capability

What emerged was striking.

Practitioners do not generally believe organisations lack:

• strategic thinking capability
• analytical capability
• or delivery capability

Most organisations can develop strategy. Most organisations can deliver projects.

What they struggle with is the management of the space in between:
implementation.

Or more accurately: continuous implementation.

Because strategy implementation is not a one-off transition from planning to delivery.
It is an ongoing management discipline.

That means:

• managing strategic communication
• maintaining the cascade of objectives
• orchestrating prioritisation
• establishing meaningful measures
• enabling fair accountability
• and sustaining integrated information and data capability

Those themes surfaced again last night during a dinner discussion on AI, Portfolio Management, and Financial Services hosted by leaders from Uppwise and Aries.

Gioacchino Gaudioso from Uppwise presented a compelling vision for a connected backbone supporting strategy execution and portfolio governance.

Mason Edwards from Aries explored the growing impact AI may have on portfolio management, decision support, and strategic coordination.

Stefano Corradino, Head of Group PMO at Sella, shared practical experience from transforming governance across more than 550 projects using Uppwise as a portfolio backbone.

One part of the discussion particularly resonated with me.

• Nobody in the room questioned the ability of leadership teams to create ambitious strategies.
• Nobody questioned the capability of PMOs and delivery professionals to execute work.

Yet there was broad recognition that many organisations still suffer from a serious disconnect between strategy and delivery.

At one point the issue was summarised simply: “we just don’t talk to each other.”

That sounds simplistic, but it captures something very real.

Too often:

• strategic intent is insufficiently connected to operational prioritisation
• departmental plans drift away from enterprise objectives
• strategic work is repeatedly displaced by short-term crises
• portfolio prioritisation becomes detached from strategic outcomes
• risk reporting lacks visibility of Mission Critical Objectives
• and governance falls into “Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell” behaviour patterns

The conversation also connected strongly with themes from the BIG CIC session on Data the previous evening.

The issue is rarely lack of information. The issue is fragmentation.

• Finance arrives with one version of reality
• Delivery teams bring another
• Operational functions hold their own
• Strategy teams maintain separate views again

The challenge is not simply producing dashboards. It is creating trusted, integrated, decision-ready information with visible provenance and shared context.

Platforms such as Uppwise can help provide integration points and operational visibility.
But there was also recognition around the table that many organisations still do not see PPM capability as a core enterprise management function.

From my perspective, several conclusions continue to emerge.

• Strategy implementation is a major organisational weakness.
• The connection between strategy and projects remains poorly managed in many environments
• Organisations underinvest in the operational capability needed to sustain integrated strategy execution.
• PMOs and portfolio management capabilities are often treated as administrative support functions rather than strategic operating capabilities.

The answer is not another colourful strategy slide pack. Nor is it simply implementing a PPM platform.

The deeper issue is how organisations operate the connection between strategy, governance, prioritisation, delivery, accountability, and information.

That operating gap is real – and increasingly, people across strategy, governance, PMO, portfolio, and transformation communities are recognising it.

The organisations that successfully solve this problem should be talking far more loudly about how they are doing it.

More about the Uppwise Technology:

Product Uppwise	Website https://www.uppwise.com/
Contact Tom Joice and Chiara Cesari	Introduction Uppwise is a strategic portfolio and execution management platform designed to connect strategy, investment decisions, portfolio prioritisation, resource capacity, and delivery execution into a single operational management environment. It helps organisations align initiatives to strategic goals, optimise portfolio decisions, manage constrained resources, and improve execution visibility across enterprise change portfolios.
Email t.joice@uppwise.com / c.cesari@uppwise.com	BIG Blog  – this is it.
Location Global	Summary Uppwise operates in the strategic portfolio management and enterprise execution layer, helping organisations translate strategic intent into prioritised, funded, and resource-balanced delivery portfolios. It combines strategy alignment, portfolio prioritisation, capacity management, and execution governance within a connected management system. The platform appears particularly strong in helping organisations balance competing demand, constrained resources, and portfolio trade-offs while maintaining alignment to strategic objectives.
Area Execute	Primary role Strategic portfolio management, strategy execution & resource optimisation		System type System of coordination and portfolio orchestration		Level of operation Enterprise / EPMO / portfolio governance / transformation office
Buyer COO / CIO / Chief Transformation Officer / Head of Portfolio / EPMO Lead	Key Difference Strong emphasis on integrating strategy, portfolio prioritisation, funding, resource capacity planning, and execution governance into a unified operating layer		Entry Point Strategic portfolio management / portfolio rationalisation / capacity bottlenecks / enterprise transformation governance		Maturity level Mid to late – strategy established, organisation seeking integrated execution discipline, portfolio optimisation, and resource-aligned delivery
Trigger problem Organisations struggle to align strategic priorities with finite resources, investment decisions, and delivery capacity across competing portfolios		Pain Portfolio overload, resource conflicts, weak prioritisation discipline, disconnected execution reporting, and poor visibility of whether investment and delivery activity truly reflect strategic inten		Desired outcome A connected strategic execution environment where objectives, portfolios, investments, resources, and delivery activity are continuously aligned, prioritised, governed, and optimised to support effective enterprise decision-making and strategic outcomes.

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