Program Management as a Formidable Weapon

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.

  Benefits Realization   Estimating   Governance   PMO  

It’s a great tribute to the project management profession that program management is now more formally recognized in the business world today. PMI was at the forefront of formalizing this discipline by starting the Program Management Professional (PgMP)^® certification many years ago.

It’s easy to think that the need for program management arises proactively in an organization in response to well-defined and thoroughly formulated strategic objectives. After all, the idea of adding a management structure for benefits realization from multiple projects would be most appealing to companies that have much control over their destiny. Yet, if “necessity is the mother of invention,” the need for program management sometimes arises under the most difficult of circumstances. Competitive pressures and a changing business landscape can trigger businesses to wake up and overlay related projects with a management structure organized for consolidated benefits—hence a program is born.

Perhaps you’ve seen this scenario happen in the corporate world: a company learns of a serious business threat (e.g., a competitor launches a new product or builds a facility in the company’s territory). Perhaps a series of hidden workflow flaws suddenly manifest themselves, causing a large impact to the financials (e.g., billing gaps). Maybe new security …

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