The difference between project and program management

It was, of course, supported by detailed schedules for each of the sub-projects’ work streams, and fluctuations in predicted delivery dates for individual projects were tracked and reported against the high level view. This was supported by the establishment of some key milestone dates associated with the program delivery to enable the business executive layer an opportunity to understand and track program delivery performance.

Note that this refocus in scheduling led to the identification in several significant gaps in planning in the overall transformation plan. These typically related in business change support areas that were above and beyond the immediacy of the technical development efforts, but were nonetheless extremely important to the successful achievement of the overall program objectives.

Deliverables versus benefits

The genesis of an individual project almost inevitably relates to some benefit to be realised by the business, but is typically translated into one or several specific outcomes or deliverables that results in the benefit being realised. Hence, by its very nature, a project is typically focused on the delivery of one or several specific outcomes or deliverables.

This works for the typical project, but becomes more complicated as the number of work streams and sub-projects increase. In the transformation program example, the attempts to track against activities caused confusion and drove the executive into questioning testing results and a high level of detail in the program at the expense of understanding the threats to the overall program.

To ensure the benefits originally sought are realised requires the deliverables to be carefully coordinated and their delivery orchestrated to ensure the outcomes remain aligned to the business benefits sought. In this manner, fluctuations and changes to the individual project outcomes could then be assessed and reported against in the context of the overall program objective.

Risk and issues management

A key driver of the change in focus from the project to program level was to better assist the key decision makers in making necessary decisions based on program performance metrics, which related to specific performance metrics aimed at the overall change objectives, rather than having them mired in detailed sub-project element issues.

To achieve this purpose, the risk and issues logs were refocused to address risks and issues against the overall program objectives, rather than against specific activities that were in deep in the bowels of the sub-project activities.

This resulted in greater clarity of priority of issues and risks to the program, and ultimately was used to facilitate more effective discussions with the program and business executive that were centred around the issues that mattered most, rather than individual and inconsistent emotive problems raised within the body or work.

Stakeholder engagement

Ultimately, the focus at the program level drove a significant change in behaviours regarding how the program key stakeholders were engaged. The engagement moved from being issues- and status-focused against specific activities, to becoming more involved in driving understanding the business change required and the threats to achievement of the strategic intent of the program.

Overall, these subtle but important changes resulted in a more coherent and understandable picture of the transformation program being presented. This resulted in greater engagement with the business and led to a better understanding of the time required to achieve the benefits being sought.

The program and business executive level were better informed of the priority issues and were able to drive outcomes more effectively than when previously mired in detailed, but ultimately unnecessary, reporting.

The greater engagement with the business also opened the eyes and ears of the business to the program activities and facilitated better change; this became crucial leading up to the ultimate system go-live and transition stages.

Yes, the program did finally get to the go-live stage. I’m not sure if this would have been possible had it continue to be managed as a large project, as distinct from a program.