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Michel Thiry, the author of Program Management, was a nice guy. However, I disagreed with him on page 1. He wrote:
“Project managers lack the ability and/or proficiency to understand and question strategic language and are often unaware of the expected benefits.”
If you don’t know the benefits, why would you be working on the project at all? How can you expect to get buy-in from stakeholders if the project is not explained in a way that they can understand?
I believe project managers are (or should) fully capable of understanding business strategy. If you aren’t, you should go out and learn.
We weren’t off on a good footing. Thiry provides clear definitions of portfolios, programs, and projects. He says that programs are a way to achieve business strategy.
They are an integral part of mature organizations, and they ensure that strategy and operations are more aligned. This is great, but the book doesn’t discuss how project managers and project teams can deal with in situations where there isn’t an aligned program. This is a huge gap in current project management books, and it would have been nice to see this book acknowledge it.
Marketing your program
A short section on marketing your program is included. It discusses how project communication management has evolved to include marketing skills. It is important to get the right stakeholder involvement. Marketing is one way to do this.
The book also contains a clear job description for program managers, so you can see how communications and marketing efforts relate to the rest.
Programming culture:
The culture section is also very helpful: how to create the right culture, encourage a program approach to thinking as opposed to a single project and how to manage culture shifts. Thirty-three authors:
“Project managers are often focused on the success ‘theirs’ project. It is difficult for them to refocus and refocus on our’ program. Control-focused organizations don’t allow project or program managers to experiment with team accountability… Program management in such circumstances creates mixed messages between the implicit expectations of the organization and the environment’s explicit limits.
The program culture can be great, but the organization may only support one way or another of doing things. It is up to you to create a culture that values the program’s success more than individual success. This is a difficult task.
Focus on governance
Good governance is a key ingredient of successful programs. Thiry spends a lot of time talking about governance. He says that governance on programs is a subset in corporate governance. It is there to ensure that the program’s purpose is clearly defined and achieved.
He discusses three ways to approach program governance: integrated, controlling, and networked. This means that there is likely one of these styles that will suit your organization and program culture.
This section also examines stakeholder management and how it differs from project managing – not much from what I gathered. However, your stakeholder population on program is likely to exceed that on project.
This book is part of Gower’s Fundamentals of Project Management Series, so it is very basic. It is a solid introduction to program management. There are also some additional bits, such as the concept of the benefits breakdown.
The book draws frequent comparisons to Program Management Professional (PgMP(r)) standards, and places the advice in the context of these.
If you are interested in learning more about program management and are willing to put in the effort,
