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Viewing Posts by Lung-Hung Chou
When Is Program Management the Right Choice?
Categories:
Program Management
Categories: Program Management
| Project managers often ask me: When is a program needed? Under what circumstances is program management appropriate? What's the difference between running multiple projects at the same time and running a program? In terms of delivering a benefit or generating a synergistic outcome, program management can help. This is especially true when you're managing interdependent projects. Say you're running four projects at the same time: a hardware development project, a 3-D character animation project, an exterior design project and a controller project for a game console. You can indeed manage these four projects separately with shared resources and technologies. But if two of the projects come from the same client, you should have a program. Or if your company plans to own the game console -- which requires you to produce a product by integrating the deliverables of each individual project -- you need a program. Take Nintendo's Wii. Development of the console definitely calls for the centralized, coordinated management of a program, or at least, a program-like logic to run it. Making the Wii requires coordinating the component supply, system coding, and exterior and hardware design, including the controller. There is also storyboard planning for plots and characters for Nintendo-owned licenses to help launch the console, layouts for different language versions, etc. Of course, the design and production of each specialized component will have to be done through individual projects. Yet they end up being part of a wider program because they are interdependent with all the other components for the final console. A program is also necessary because to deliver the final console on schedule, a greater degree of governance has to be used. It must ensure that the projects run as planned so individual delays do not hamper the overall output of the program: a finished, completed Wii console. What do you think? How do you know when program management is your best option? |
How Project Managers Can Help Their Communities
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PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
| Tonight, I accepted PMI's Community Advancement Award--Organization category at PMI Global Congress 2010--North America. Being the former president of the Institute of Taiwan Project Management, I feel very grateful. Unlike other personal awards, this award honors an organization, which gives recognition to the efforts made by ITPM, a collective labor made by 300 volunteering project managers. Community work enables people to live better lives. For project managers who enthusiastically dedicate themselves to their communities, project management tools and techniques can help them be more efficient and productive. Po-Jen Huang, PMP, project manager and architect at Far Eastern Technical Consultants Co. Ltd., for example, volunteered to help re-build five village schools that were destroyed around Taoyuan in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Every aspect of the reconstruction work -- collecting and analyzing requirements, time and budget control, risk management and quality assurance -- was completed under stringent project management methodologies. The team reached its goals within budget, without significant delays while delivering quality outcomes. Here are some ways project managers can use their skills to help their communities: Effective communication: Using their team-building and conflict-resolution skills, project managers can help communities bring their ideas together. Project managers can also help their communities identify problems, set priorities, develop confidence and solve problems together. Process management: Tapping into their shared language and knowledge of project management skills and practices, project managers can effectively establish guidelines and procedures. Project managers are very aware of the different categories of risks, risk triggers, and the procedures for quality assurance and quality control. The response to a community effort can be more efficiently guided, and the transition to different phases of community work or reconstruction can be managed smoothly. Solid execution: Project management skills and practices ensure community work or construction is carried out quickly and efficiently. Minimal delays rest with what all Professional project managers are good at resource allocation, time and budget management. If they stick to that, the project should have minimal delays. |
Strategic Project Portfolio Gives China a Competitive Edge
Categories:
Portfolio Management
Categories: Portfolio Management
| The Shanghai Expo 2010 isn't just about putting on a great show for 180 days. It embodies a large-scale program, especially in terms of the economic and political synergy it created for a developing country. Like the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the expo is a collection of projects whose collective purpose benefited the nation and fulfilled the government's strategic objectives. The expo and the Olympics were part of a national portfolio aimed at achieving countrywide political objectives for boosting the economy. Both were planned and executed with the intent to cultivate high-tech skills and knowledge aimed at ensuring growth and competitiveness in the future. For example, the Chinese government required every contractor carrying out individual projects to employ Chinese workers, including certified project managers. This has ensured that enough skilled workers necessary for national development have been trained. By the end of 2009, the number of PMI certified project managers in China was 29,414 -- the second-largest number in the world. The physical legacy these programs left is also notable. Unlike games or exhibitions hosted by developed countries, both the expo and the Olympics were accompanied by massive infrastructure developments -- and not just the renovation or improvement of existing facilities. The Shanghai Expo re-developed areas in decline, and brought infrastructure and facilities to previously undeveloped areas. Apart from the huge venues, China built airports, restaurants, hotels and 11 high-speed railways. Development plans also incorporated expanding and improving the service industry of Shanghai. These projects, combined with the outcome of other national programs and projects, help advance the government's goal of growing and developing the national economy. "Projects produce deliverables; programs output benefits so as to sustain, advance or achieve organizational objectives; while portfolios ensure the alignment of the diverse objectives and independence of programs and projects to organizational strategic objectives," according to page six of The Standard for Portfolio Management. And that's exactly what the Shanghai Expo 2010 did. |
The Synergy of a Well-Run Program
| In my last post, I used The Lord of the Rings to help explain the difference between a program and a project. And I also revealed the magical prize of a well-managed program: synergy. Let's discuss an example in Taiwan: The country has been pursuing a series of e-government initiatives for some time, including an "e-Business" smart card. Users insert the card into a reader, which then provides access to more than 30 different online government services. The options include business information, marketing and tax databases, tax return calculation, patent applications -- to name a few. Business people no longer have to go to government offices, spend time telephoning officials or advisers, or print, collect or post physical documents. The bottom-line savings are substantial. Over one year, a single business might save US$100. Multiply that by 5 million businesses, and the cost savings are around US$500 million. More importantly, it means businesses have access to information and their government whenever they want it. This is the "synergy" I'm talking about. But why does such an initiative have to be run as a program, instead of as multiple projects that need coordination? In this case, more than 30 projects across different application areas are involved and they share a group of IT and telecom resources. With the need to exchange resources, and communicate both vertically and horizontally, a higher level of governance is needed. Program managers and project managers have different focuses and see things differently. Program managers are primarily concerned with the coordination among projects, while project managers are primarily concerned with the management of their own projects. But working together, they can create that magical synergy. |
One Program To Rule Them All
| Program management refers to the process of integrated governance of several related projects to achieve an aggregate result that cannot be delivered by conducting these projects separately. It may not seem like it, but you can learn a lot about the synergy available through effective program management from The Lord of the Rings. In the novels and films, the characters of Gandalf, Theoden and Aragorn inspire and command others to be courageous and achieve great feats. Even before a battle starts, these mythical leaders inspire confidence in their men, carefully positioning them in accordance with their skills. Each man has tasks for each stage of the upcoming battle. But they are only effective when coordinated with an understanding of their individual strengths and weaknesses, and knowledge of how they can be used to support and protect each other. Under a wise leader -- acting as a program manager -- the power of these warriors can be multiplied when coordinated properly. This synergy ensures that every battle they engage in, and every war they fight, victory is at hand. Yet if badly coordinated, the strength and courage of these bands of cavalry, archers, spearmen or swordsmen -- the leader's resources -- is wasted, despite whatever heroic skills they possess individually. Program management is mainly concerned with managing stakeholders, which in the case of an entire program is a larger, more diverse and more complicated group of than is involved in an individual project. Their interests are different, sometimes contradictory, and their individual impacts -- whether big or small, for good or bad -- may be very significant to the success or failure of the entire program. The daunting scale of such programs are often not fantasy -- but may appear to demand wizards and heroes to manage them, let alone manage them so that a proper synergy takes place from the different projects involved. What kind of projects can be managed through a program?
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