One of the areas I am tasked with managing in my current role is all activities regarding telecommunications to open new, move and close our offices. I am struggling with how this should be defined. Is this a Program as it's multiple projects all going on at the same time? They each have a beginning and end with the result being a functioning office with internet and phones. Each result is a bit different depending on the needs. Or is this Operations because these office openings, moves, and closures are continuous with a repetitive output - a functioning office. Saving Changes...
It sounds like you have a program, because you have multiple related projects serving some common purpose. Within that program, the projects may still be part of operations when you have a repeatable process.
For example, my employer designs and build very large mechanical systems for a variety of customers, that take many months from initiation through delivery. Each major product family is a program. Each new customer purchase is customized to their needs and becomes a new project. The process to do that is mature and repeatable however, so it has been "operationalized". In that case, each new project is part of the operational framework within the program. We have design engineering teams to work the changed portions, and an engineering operations team to perform the highly repeatable process focused work.
In your case, the planning for each new, moved, or closed office could be a unique project with its own planning as part of a larger program. The planning may primarily occur in a PMO. Some of the resulting activities like setting up desks, and scheduling moving trucks follows is very repeatable in the way it is performed, and the people performing those tasks would work for an operations focused team outside the PMO. Saving Changes...
If this is something which is going to be ongoing without a defined end in mind and if the degree of uncertainty regarding new moves is extremely low, then it has now become an operational activity similar to manufacturing a piece of complicated equipment on a repeated basis. Ideally, you will have a playbook which will continually evolve capturing the learnings from past office setups.
I managed something similar as a program, open and closing warehouses, moving assets, installing tech and helping operations to do that. In my case operations didn't have a program manager, so I led all the tasks with the different leaders, project manager and/or scrums depending on the department.
So, if is something that has an end....you can manage as a program.
Hope it helps. Saving Changes...
Rohit lallSenior Director| WestpacSydney, Nsw, Australia
It sounds like program where the output is intended to be on the three types of requirements- New/Move/Close and for each of these requirements there would be a dedicated project teams to enable the change. You also mention that the end output will have nuance depending upon the need, which means the team cannot exactly repeat the same steps even for the same requirement type say 'New'.
Also the boundary condition of start date , end date and allocated budget make it more like project environment. Saving Changes...
