| Program Management |
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| Program Management is the process of managing multiple ongoing inter-dependent projects. An example would be that of designing, manufacturing and providing support infrastructure for an automobile manufacturer. This requires hundreds, or even thousands, of separate projects. In an organization or enterprise, Program Management also reflects the emphasis on coordinating and prioritizing resources across projects, departments, and entities to ensure that resource contention is managed from a global focus. |
| Program management provides a layer above project management focusing on selecting the best group of programs, defining them in terms of their constituent projects and providing an infrastructure where projects can be run successfully but leaving project management to the project management community. |
| Key factors in program management |
- Governance: The structure, process, and procedure to control operations and changes to performance objectives.
- Standards: Define the performance architecture.
- Alignment: The program must support higher level vision, goals and objectives.
- Assurance: Verify and validate the program, ensuring adherence to standards and alignment with the vision.
- Management: Ensure there are regular reviews, there is accountability, and that management of projects, stakeholders and suppliers is in place.
- Integration: Optimize performance across the program value chain, functionally and technically.
- Finances: Tracking of finances is an important part of Program management and basic costs together with wider costs of administering the program are all tracked.
- Infrastructure: Allocation of resources influences the cost and success of the program. Infrastructure might cover offices, version control, and IT.
- Planning: Develop the plan bringing together the information on projects, resources, timescales, monitoring and control.
- Improvement: Continuously assess performance; research and develop new capabilities; and systemically apply learning and knowledge to the program.
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