Program Management
How Do Program Management and Project Management Relate?
Often organizations find themselves tackling several IT projects at the same time and those individual projects have overlapping schedules, resource needs, and dependencies. While traditional project management consulting techniques are effective in managing each of the projects individually, a higher level structure and methodology is required to manage a complex and interdependent project environment and that structure and methodology is provided by program management.
Where project management is usually focused on a specific project with a specific end point, program management is used to oversee several projects that start and finish over time and may be a permanent element in an organization’s structure. While project management is primarily concerned with achieving a specific output, program management focuses on higher level outcomes and on choosing the correct set of projects and resource priorities in support of an organization’s strategy. And while Project Managers facilitate project and business decisions made by others, Program Managers are senior business leaders who typically oversee Project Managers and make and drive business, program, and project decisions.
In organizations where simultaneous or overlapping projects are vying for the same resources – financial, human, or technological – locally-set, cross-project priorities can give rise to suboptimal conflicts that can compromise an organization’s overall strategy, effectiveness, and success. A Program Manager can help resolve such conflicts, but even more importantly, he can use program management tools and techniques to anticipate conflicts and bottlenecks before they happen.
For example, Theory of Constraints (TOC) analysis and critical path diagrams can reveal specific areas to focus on and resolve rather than simply feeding projects into the pipeline, requiring resources to work at or beyond full capacity, and assuming that these measures will result in the shortest schedule of deliveries. A simple example of this is the metering of traffic inflows from onramps onto busy highways. As we can all attest, controlled inflows result in quicker and more efficient deliveries for the system as a whole compared to the uncontrolled and/or overloading of a channel with the expectation that the resulting conflicts can and will be sorted out efficiently as they arise. Program management serves a similar function in a multi-project organization and provides the analysis and management needed to effectively schedule projects into the organization’s resource set without over taxing it.
Project management and program management have several traits in common but are unique disciplines. Each requires specialized knowledge, and both are particularly needed when it comes to facilitating and ensuring the success of IT projects. 120VC is able to provide the specialized knowledge, experience, and expertise to do both. In fact, we are truly the only project management company in the United States that focuses solely on providing project and program management services to its customers. It’s the only thing we do. Give us a call today to learn how we can help you succeed in your challenges.
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