Salman RiazSenior Program ManagerKhobar, Saudi Arabia
Business have to stay vigilant and agile to stay relevant and achieve growth status in the value chain.
Digital Transformation has been at the top of every CEO's agenda, a crisp enterprise architecture office ensures the principles and reasons for change are well established, understood and followed by the organization.
Program management can be the answer to many questions left unanswered.
How has your experience been in employing program management ?
Have you had the opportunity to amalgamate TOGAF and program management ?
How do you feel Program management can help transition and sustainment in a EA/ Transformation initiative ? Saving Changes...
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Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Salman
I have rarely seen program management as an explicit feature of organizations, except with SAFe implementations, but then the focus is rather on agile than program management and selling a framework and certifications.
I have seen TOGAF used by IT-related architecture functions, but they usually are not in charge of programs; they support them.
Program management is often implemented bottom-up, starting with one initiative, like, as you mention, IT-related Transformations, and not relying on a corporate-wide program management policy.
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Salman RiazSenior Program ManagerKhobar, Saudi Arabia
Thank you Thomas,
Digital Transformation are often viewed as an IT function,
We are trying to change that perspective.
Any transformation effort is undertaken in order to satisfy a business desire, which eventually comes down to Vision, mission, and a business plan.
There is perception ( not accurate through ) that TOGAF or transformation are IT led or for IT and that is one main reason why these programs usually fail.
I would like to know more from your experience how were these program initiated and how did they go ? Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Indeed my experience with programs is about PMOs, investment banking tooling, SAP implementations, process outsourcing (all successful), digital transformation on enterprise level (failed). Except for PMOs and investment banking (1995-2001), all were led by business people. The last one just did not manage to get the scope right. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The problem is simple to solve. Just to put it in terms of the PMI all is covered inside business analysis standards. The first thing is to help to all involved people to understand that organizations are open (because interact with the environment) and adaptable (because it changes (transform) when the environment changes and creates change in the environment) systems, where system is not software systems. Then, organizations have structure. We can call it enterprise architecture. This is the reason to use the word "transformation": each thing you introduce in the system will move the whole system from one state to other state. This will be done thanks to create a solution where solution is equal to "the thing" to be created plus "the way" to create it. Saving Changes...
All of the multi-team change efforts I led, including agile transformations, incorporated program management. The change of each team is its own project; those projects must be prioritized and coordinated; and there are underlying cross-team (thus cross-project) efforts to be implemented. My training to become a certified change manager included practices similar to PMI's program management teachings. I suspect that failure to recognize an enterprise change effort requires program management is one reason the majority of those efforts fail.
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1 reply by Salman Riaz
Dec 31, 2024 5:05 AM
Salman Riaz
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Well said.
I have seen EA initiatives fail, because they are perceived as projects, in my experience I advise clients to take them up as programs.
A lot of these initiatives fail because:
a. Strategic alignment is not carried out at the start or during the execution.
b. Benefit management is never performed. Management has business goals in their mind, however decomposing those benefits and executing projects is mostly a failure.
c. EA and transformation are not events as they don't have a definitive end state, they are better perceived as culture.
d. Too many EA initiatives fail because they are not costed right. If only the business case is made clearly and management can see benefit Vs Cost, they will be able to understand and support the cause a lot better.
Saving Changes...
Salman RiazSenior Program ManagerKhobar, Saudi Arabia
Dec 30, 2024 9:43 AM
Replying to Jim Morgan
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All of the multi-team change efforts I led, including agile transformations, incorporated program management. The change of each team is its own project; those projects must be prioritized and coordinated; and there are underlying cross-team (thus cross-project) efforts to be implemented. My training to become a certified change manager included practices similar to PMI's program management teachings. I suspect that failure to recognize an enterprise change effort requires program management is one reason the majority of those efforts fail.
Well said.
I have seen EA initiatives fail, because they are perceived as projects, in my experience I advise clients to take them up as programs.
A lot of these initiatives fail because:
a. Strategic alignment is not carried out at the start or during the execution.
b. Benefit management is never performed. Management has business goals in their mind, however decomposing those benefits and executing projects is mostly a failure.
c. EA and transformation are not events as they don't have a definitive end state, they are better perceived as culture.
d. Too many EA initiatives fail because they are not costed right. If only the business case is made clearly and management can see benefit Vs Cost, they will be able to understand and support the cause a lot better. Saving Changes...
