Necessary but not sufficient

‘The visions and initiatives required for managing large business transformations are sorely lacking’, a senior IT manager confides with me. Other professionals managing multiple projects have also come to feel that an emerging discipline such as Program Management is being meaninglessly confused with the management of large projects.

Let me try to make it as clear as possible: Program Management is NOT simply an extension of traditional Project Management practices. These latter, though necessary, are not sufficient in the face of contemporary project challenges.

Today’s fast-paced customer environments are narrowly focused on providing transactional services and otherwise limited to delivering specific deliverables. I have encountered few project environments making real use of structured Program Management. With an emphasis on interdependency management, I believe, PgM can be used for more than a crisis management tool.

While most project managers may agree theoretically to what I have said above, there are few who would advocate the risk (and opportunities) of integrated Program Management to their sponsors. The problem is not with levels of knowledge or attitudes at the work place, the limitation is perhaps in the very speed of delivery that has become the only visible measure of efficiency for projects today. It’s a conundrum that deserves the project management community’s attention today.