The Program Management Strategy

Patti Gilchrist, PMP, is a Senior Technical Manager with more than 20 years of IT experience. Visit her website at www.freepmstudy.com

  Program Management  

Conceptually, program management bridges the gap between corporate strategy and projects. It takes a broader and more comprehensive view of the organization’s activities ("Benefits of Program Management") and establishes the reason behind the endeavor. It explains why we are undertaking the effort in the first place ("Bridging the Gap Between Corporate Strategy and Project Management").

However, there seems to be some confusion about program management, particularly as to how it differs from project management. According to the Project Management Institute, program managers aren’t “simply senior project managers” ("What Does It Take to Be a Program Manager").

If you do a google search and ask “What is a program?”, you will get a generic response such as the following: “A program is a group of related projects (components) managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually.”

Similarly, if you ask “What is program management?”, your search will return lots of responses providing general definitions such as: “The centralized coordinated management of a program to achieve the program's benefits and objectives. It arises from the need to identify, monitor and control the interdependencies among the components. It involves…

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