Program Management: Connecting the Dots

Paul has run a plethora of projects in multiple industries throughout his 20-year career, ranging from process improvement to agile to most recently cyber-security. Paul is also a reputable speaker, drawing practical and humorous conclusions from the "trenches" of his employers. Paul's dedication as a PM practitioner started decades ago, when he became one of the first 10,000 people to earn the PMP.

  Program Management  

Although I’ve only had the formal title of “program manager” once in my 14 year project management career, I’ve had the advantage of serving both roles: program and project manager. Assignment into either role was based more on opportunity than career desire. Some efforts required project management, and others required program management. It depended on the project scale, environment, initial scope definition, etc.

Sometimes when a project manager is assigned to a project, it is the project manager who deems the project a program--not the sponsor. I’ve seen many cases where a project manager is assigned with a limited role, and through the natural discovery inherent in project startup, the project manager uncovers more stakeholders and departments that need to be involved--which is a good argument for dubbing the project a program.

This raises fundamental questions: What is a program? What is program management, and how does it differ from project management?

Many years ago, I was selected by the Southwest Ohio PMI chapter to help build an inaugural test prep class for the Program Management Professional (PgMP) designation, just after PMI introduced it. My colleagues and I worked from a very light standards book to attempt a “one-size-fits-all” definition of program management. Because we all came from different …

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