Wrike's strategic planning software: Align strategy with execution
Set your goals, connect them to the work that delivers them, and track progress in real time. All with one strategic framework, powered by AI insights from your live project data.
TRUSTED BY 20,000+ ORGANIZATIONS WORLDWIDE
Simplify your strategic planning process with Wrike
Most strategic plans stall in the space between the boardroom and the work. Wrike connects strategy development to execution, so your team always knows what matters and leadership always knows where things stand.
Align every team
Connect daily tasks to company objectives so everyone sees how their work advances the strategic vision.
Track progress in real time
Watch KPIs and initiative health on live dashboards instead of chasing status updates across spreadsheets.
Adapt without losing momentum
Turn agility into a competitive advantage by reprioritizing work, reallocating resources, and instantly rolling out changes when necessary.
Focus on what matters most
See every initiative ranked by strategic value and spot where you’re overcommitted, so you fund the work that moves the plan and cut what doesn’t.
Turn strategy into a clear direction to hit every target
Set goals, map the work, and measure progress with AI-powered insights drawn from your live project data, all in Wrike's strategic planning software.
Plan, track, and report
Create and auto-organize your team’s goals. Use shared calendars that are automatically connected to tasks for better planning and real-time updates.
Set, monitor, and adjust your strategic roadmap
Create task dependencies and visualize milestones to mark major events and connect them to the work that makes them possible.
Manage team workload for strategic success
Prioritize tasks based on everyone’s workload and plan work allocation to avoid burnout and conflicts. Our AI also surfaces capacity risks early, so you can take action before problems arise.
Align resource planning with business priorities
See who’s working on what and the capacity they have committed before accepting new work. Anticipate resource demand by analyzing project requirements and staff availability in one place.
Instant insights and visibility for all stakeholders
Monitor work and project trends develop by month, quarter, or year. Report finding your way — in pie charts, graphs, pivot tables, and much more.
Manage strategic project portfolios
Monitor work across complex, cross-department portfolios. Align team members from strategy to execution to maximize resources, simplify governance, and align projects with business goals.
Plan, track, and report
Create and auto-organize your team’s goals. Use shared calendars that are automatically connected to tasks for better planning and real-time updates.
Set, monitor, and adjust your strategic roadmap
Create task dependencies and visualize milestones to mark major events and connect them to the work that makes them possible.
Manage team workload for strategic success
Prioritize tasks based on everyone’s workload and plan work allocation to avoid burnout and conflicts. Our AI also surfaces capacity risks early, so you can take action before problems arise.
Align resource planning with business priorities
See who’s working on what and the capacity they have committed before accepting new work. Anticipate resource demand by analyzing project requirements and staff availability in one place.
Instant insights and visibility for all stakeholders
Monitor work and project trends develop by month, quarter, or year. Report finding your way — in pie charts, graphs, pivot tables, and much more.
Manage strategic project portfolios
Monitor work across complex, cross-department portfolios. Align team members from strategy to execution to maximize resources, simplify governance, and align projects with business goals.
Simplify strategic planning with Wrike and AI
Wrike's strategic planning software lets your team set goals, track progress, and stay aligned, with AI support built into the same platform.
FEATURE
Goals & OKRs
Link every company objective to its supporting projects and tasks, so progress toward each key result updates in real time as work gets done.
Learn more
FEATURE
Data-rich dashboards
Keep leadership informed without manual status updates by sharing live dashboards of initiative health and KPI progress, with AI-powered highlights surfacing what needs attention first.
Learn more
FEATURE
Portfolio prioritization
Decide which initiatives to fund by ranking every active and proposed project against capacity and strategic priorities in one view. Rebalance instantly when priorities change.
Learn more
FEATURE
Customizable Gantt charts
Adjust your strategy map the moment plans change by dragging task bars to new dates. The Gantt view maps timelines, visualizes dependencies, and automatically updates connected work.
Learn more
FEATURE
AI agents & Wrike Copilot
Cut the busywork of planning by deploying AI agents that roll up status updates, route approvals, and flag risks at scale. Describe the agent you need, and Wrike will build it with testing and full auditability.
Learn more
FEATURE
Advanced analytics
Answer leadership’s questions with data analytics built for strategy. You can generate custom reports on goal progress, resource use, and ROI. Ask Wrike Copilot in natural language, and get charts and insights built from your actual work data.
Learn more
Keep your strategy connected to the rest of the business with integrations
Wrike's 400+ integrations sync your goal and progress data with the systems your team uses daily. Connect Tableau or Power BI so your strategy shows up in the board deck, Slack and Teams so updates reach everyone, and Salesforce or HubSpot so revenue numbers stay tied to your goals.
Templates to go from goals to execution
Speed up your planning with Wrike's prebuilt templates for goal setting, roadmapping, and execution. Each one gives you an AI-ready starting point you can adapt to your own workflows.
OKR Template
The OKR template helps your team define measurable steps and assign accountability, improving strategic planning and making company goals more achievable.
Try this template
Business Goals
Prioritize your company’s unique objectives, set clear targets for your teams, and roll out the strategy across multiple departments.
Try this template
Action Plan
Turn strategy into action. Organize tasks into folders, map your timeline on a Gantt chart, and track progress with shared dashboards.
Try this template
Product Roadmap Template
Prioritize initiatives, track progress, and coordinate activities across teams on a single roadmap.
Try this template
Quarterly Business Review
Organize your QBR agenda, show data and visuals to stakeholders, and turn the review into actionable follow-up tasks.
Try this template
Complex Project With Phases
Break large strategic initiatives into manageable phases, assign due dates, and track progress on a visual timeline.
Try this template
Turn your strategic plan into real progress
Connect goals to daily work and track every initiative in real time — all in one AI-powered platform.
4.5 based on 13,000+ reviews
What is strategic planning?
Strategic planning is the process of defining an organization’s direction and aligning resources to turn long-term objectives into actionable results. It’s a type of business strategy that involves setting goals, identifying key initiatives, and outlining a clear sequence of activities to achieve measurable outcomes.
Simply put, strategic planning helps an organization figure out where it wants to go (its vision statement and goals), how it will get there (strategies and initiatives), and how it will know if it’s succeeding (key performance indicators or KPIs).
When done right, it helps teams stay focused on progress and respond effectively to change, meeting their goals despite internal and external factors. It’s the blueprint for operational excellence.
5 key steps in strategic planning
Following a clear process helps teams prioritize what matters and keep progress visible at every step. Here are the five key steps that make strategic planning effective:
- Define the vision and mission: Align your team around a shared purpose with stakeholder input from across the organization. Your vision describes where you want to go, while your mission explains why you exist and how you’ll get there.
- Analyze the current business environment: Run a situational analysis to assess where you stand with a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) and a PESTLE analysis (political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental factors), backed by real performance data.
- Set goals and objectives: Translate strategy into measurable targets. Long-term goals, OKRs, and SMART principles (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) all keep teams aligned and progress trackable.
- Create strategies, action plans, and track metrics: Break goals into action plans with clear ownership and timelines, allocate resources based on team capacity, and attach KPIs so you know what’s working and where to pivot.
- Implement, monitor, and adjust: Bring the plan to life with project management tools that track progress, surface issues early, and keep teams aligned as things evolve.
Proper strategic planning is only half the job. The teams that see results are the ones that connect strategy to daily execution, where every task ties back to a company goal and leadership can track progress in real time. That’s what Wrike is built to do.
Using strategic planning with project management software
When your team understands how their tasks tie to company goals, they can focus and deliver their best work. A workflow management platform is key to making this connection seamless. With built-in collaboration features, teams can communicate clearly, share updates, and improve daily operations — no matter where they are.
Dashboards provide a visual overview of progress and track KPIs that matter most to your strategy. Ready-made strategic planning templates speed up the process and help standardize workflows, so senior leadership can focus on driving results instead of reinventing the wheel.
Ready to try it out for yourself?
FAQs about strategic planning
The staples are SWOT, PESTLE, balanced scorecards, and OKRs. Many teams also run their strategy inside a work management platform like Wrike, so planning, resource allocation, and execution are handled in the same place, and progress stays visible in real time.
The best strategic planning software depends on the problem you’re trying to solve. Wrike is an ideal choice if you want to keep strategy, execution, task tracking, project management, and OKRs in one place. Other popular solutions for various use cases include Cascade, ClearPoint Strategy, and Envisio.
Purpose (your mission and direction), People (the team who’ll execute), Process (the tools and workflows you’ll use), and Performance (the measurable goals and metrics you’ll track). It’s a simple way to check that a plan has everything it needs to succeed.
Company (your internal capabilities), Collaborators (partners and suppliers), Customers (your target audience), Competitors (market rivals), and Context (external factors like economic and regulatory conditions). The framework is primarily used during the environment analysis stage to provide leadership with a clearer basis for decision-making.
Strategic planning defines your direction and goals. On the other hand, strategic management is the ongoing work of executing, monitoring, and adjusting the plan to keep you aligned with those goals over time. Planning sets the destination of work, while management provides the route to get you there.
Most plans fail in a few predictable places, like goals set too vaguely to act on, teams that aren’t aligned on priorities, and thin or unreliable data. The biggest challenge is when the strategy never translates into operational plans, so it gets written once and forgotten instead of connecting to execution.
Get to know Wrike better
Search for features and resources to see how Wrike powers your team’s success with tailored solutions.
