Each project utilizes resources such as people, capital, and material goods. When these resources are allocated among the different projects, they help maximize the potential of each project. Program management makes sure every project is properly utilizing its resources to benefit the organizational objectives. Taking time to establish procedures, information, and communication takes time. If every project is using a different method, putting the information together can slow operations a great deal.
Program management builds a consistent line of communication between the projects and business objectives, ultimately, keeping all employees informed and on the same page. Unlike program management, which focuses on multiple tasks leading to the same objective, project management focuses on a singular task. These singular tasks are short-term projects that focus on one goal or objective.
Project management ensures that singular tasks inside the program are being completed, while program management ensures that those singular tasks are meeting the larger organizational objectives. Program management is the glue that binds design projects together. Discover the essential traits program managers should possess and the steps necessary for effective program management. Supply Chain. What is Program Management? Governance must include a set of metrics to indicate the health and progress of program management in the most vital areas.
Alignment — The program must support a higher-level vision, goals and objectives. Assurance — Verifying and validating the program, ensuring adherence to standards and alignment with the vision. Management — Ensuring there are regular reviews, there is accountability, and that management of projects, stakeholders and suppliers is in place.
Integration — Ensuring that component parts fit together properly to make the intended whole. Optimize performance across the program value chain, functionality and technically. Finances — Tracking basic costs together with wider costs of administering the program.
The top-down approach essentially teaches you to start with a strategy and assess whether the initiatives of a particular project go beyond its functional boundaries and involve stakeholders with different areas of interests. The intent would be to bring about significant changes within the organization.
The bottom-up process involves assessing stand-alone projects, which are inter-related and dependent on each other, and then grouping them under one program. This means all stand-alone projects will be working on similar lines following the same strategy.
Once you identify a program and define the key project benefits, it is important that you decide upon a few approaches to achieve them. Assess each approach, analyze the risks and benefits associated with them and select one that best suits your project requirements.
It is of paramount importance to hire the best person for managing the program. Select an inter-related set of initiatives as your program and ensure that the results are aligned with the goals of your organization. Hence, a program manager should have various types of skill sets. His knowledge should not be limited to project management. Program management provides a much more comprehensive view of the organization when compared to project management. Quite a few projects affecting the overall structure and functionalities of an organization together form a program.
Every project will have a different set of tasks to be completed which are designed to achieve a set of goals.
Hence, the person managing all these projects will have a comprehensive view of the organization and its business. A program manager oversees the ongoing activities within all the projects under him or her and evaluates them. A project should not be done just for the sake of it. Its returns should be measured well before giving a go-ahead. Any and every kind of request should not be agreed upon.
Rather, the requests should be assessed from an organizational standpoint. This requires a greater emphasis on enterprise planning, delivery and performance to respond to increased digital business demands. The EPMO is in the ideal position to support digital transformation, serving as a central point to manage cross-company program management. Instead of groups across the company working in silos, they come together to effect a change in capabilities.
Technology, products, customer service, marketing and other groups must be coordinated to ensure all are working towards the same enterprise vision through various programs.
Still, EPMOs face challenges to operationalize strategic plans. Studies consistently find that two-thirds to three-quarters of large organizations struggle to implement their strategies. An adaptive program management approach is necessary to translate strategic vision across the enterprise to deliver outcomes that often impact or change organizational processes. Program management is an effective way to realize benefits quicker and at higher value while creating scale and bridging organizational silos.
Program managers can create outcome-driven program plans and roadmaps connecting dependencies cross-functionally to manage them holistically while ensuring the organization prioritizes the execution of strategy.
Leveraging program management practices is an effective way to execute cross-functionally and realize strategy. Programs allow the organization to translate strategy into actionable goals to measure performance and mitigate the risk of failure.
Metrics should be measurable, attainable, and aligned with the overall goals of the program. What you decide to measure will drive not just the program but will help define projects and their intended value. If they have, then the strategy has changed, and the organization needs to react accordingly. That is why it is so important for programs to be a translation of strategy and not some side-list aligned to it.
Some examples of program metrics include:. These are just a few of the key metrics to think about when setting up program management to ensure maximum benefits realization. Keep in mind other Key Performance Indicators KPIs are important for specific projects, and the program as a whole, and make sure they are defined and communicated from the start.
Program management aids in strategic execution and results in more time spent on the enterprise, establishing metrics, measuring performance against strategic goals, communicating, managing priorities, and managing business change across departments.
Linda Roach champions solutions marketing at Planview, partnering with customers to articulate their business challenges and to quantify the value of implementing change. Linda works with industry analysts to understand trends and help guide Planview teams and customers to stay ahead of the curve. She has led benchmark studies and analysis for organizations to compare against peers in project and portfolio management, resource management and capacity planning, collaborative work management, and product portfolio management.
Previously, Linda held positions at Pervasive Software, VTEL, and Kodak where she led go-to-market initiatives for new products and product line expansion. Program management enables strategic execution and results in more time on establishing metrics and measuring performance against strategic goals.
Program management ensures people and teams are focused and collaborating across departments who are working together to achieve a shared strategic vision. Visualize dependencies across the business with program management. A few things to consider when thinking about program management: Drive a strategic plan while balancing against day-to-day realities: Programs create change.
They leverage a set of projects to deliver that change incrementally and measure the value they create back to the strategic goals.
0コメント