Program Managers are responsible for daily management throughout the life cycle of the program.
They define the program controls, processes, procedures, reporting, etc., to manage the program.
They plan the overall program and monitor progress to ensure milestones are met across various projects and programs.
They manage the program budget.
They manage the risks and issues that might arise over the course of the program life cycle and take measures to correct them when they occur.
They coordinate the projects and their interdependencies between the various projects and programs in the program.
They manage and use resources across the various projects and programs in the program.
They manage stakeholders involved in the projects and programs in the program.
They ensure deliverables are aligned across the projects and programs in the program.
Program Manager Skills
A program manager must:
Have strong project management experience with large and complex projects.
Have a broad knowledge of project and program management methodologies.
Understand the wider objectives of the program, such as business and strategic goals.
Require the ability to work with a wide range of individuals.
Possess strong leadership and managerial skills with appropriate experience.
Have a strong knowledge of budgeting and resource allocation procedures.
Program Controls
Program Controls refer to the set of processes, tools, and techniques used to manage and govern a program effectively. A program is a collection of interrelated projects and initiatives that work together to achieve strategic objectives and benefits for an organization.
Program Controls play a crucial role in ensuring that the program stays on track, delivers value, and aligns with the organization's goals. These controls provide visibility into the program's progress, performance, and risks, allowing program managers and stakeholders to make informed decisions and take corrective actions as needed.
Key components of Program Controls typically include:
Program Planning: Developing a comprehensive program plan that outlines the program's scope, objectives, deliverables, timelines, and resource requirements.
Planning is a comprehensive process that includes creating a detailed roadmap for the program, setting up governance structures, defining roles and responsibilities, and establishing the overall program management approach.
*A roadmap explains the why, who, and when, while a plan dives into the how.
Performance Measurement: Establishing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the program's progress and success against predefined targets and objectives.
Risk Management: Identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks that may impact the program's outcomes and taking proactive measures to address potential challenges.
Change Management: Managing changes to the program's scope, schedule, and resources while ensuring alignment with strategic objectives.
Resource Management: Allocating and managing resources, including people, budget, and equipment, to support the successful execution of program initiatives.
Quality Management: Ensuring that the deliverables and outcomes of the program meet the required quality standards and expectations.
Communications Management: Establishing effective communication channels to keep stakeholders informed about the program's progress, challenges, and achievements.
Governance and Decision-making: Defining the governance structure and decision-making processes to provide guidance and oversight to the program.
Integration and Coordination: Ensuring that individual projects within the program are integrated and coordinated to achieve synergies and avoid duplication of efforts.
Reporting and Documentation: Providing regular status reports, progress updates, and documentation to keep stakeholders informed and engaged.
Effective Program Controls contribute to successful program outcomes by enhancing transparency, accountability, and collaboration among all stakeholders involved in the program.
They help program managers identify potential issues early, make data-driven decisions, and optimize resource utilization to achieve the intended benefits and strategic objectives of the program.
Program Processes
Program Processes refer to the systematic and structured series of activities and steps undertaken to manage a program effectively from its initiation to its closure. A program is a collection of related projects and initiatives that work together to achieve strategic objectives and deliver benefits to an organization.
Program Processes provide a framework for planning, executing, monitoring, and controlling the program throughout its lifecycle.
The specific Program Processes can vary depending on the organization, industry, and the nature of the program. However, some common Program Processes include:
Program Initiation: This process involves defining the strategic objectives, benefits, and scope of the program. It includes identifying:
stakeholders
assessing feasibility
obtaining approval for the program's initiation
Program Planning: Planning is a comprehensive process that includes:
Creating a detailed roadmap for the program
Setting up governance structures
Defining roles and responsibilities
Establishing the overall program management approach
Program Execution: During this process:
The program's initiatives and projects are implemented according to the established plans and strategies
It involves coordinating the activities of individual projects and ensuring they work harmoniously to achieve program goals
Program Monitoring and Control: This process involves the following. Program managers use this data to take corrective actions and make informed decisions.
Continuously tracking the progress of the program
Comparing actual performance with planned objectives
Identifying any deviations.
Program Risk Management: Program Processes include:
Identifying
Assessing
Managing risks that may impact the successful delivery of the program's outcomes.
This process aims to mitigate risks and minimize their negative impact.
Program Change Management: Managing changes within the program:
Scope changes
Schedule adjustments
Resource reallocations
These ensure alignment with the program's strategic objectives and are properly communicated to stakeholders.
INCLUDES:
Who RAISED the change?
What is the REASON for the change?
What is the RETURN required from the change?
What are the RISKS involved in the change?
What RESOURCES are required to deliver the change?
Who is RESPONSIBLE for the build, test and implementation of the change?
Program Quality Management: Ensuring that the program's deliverables and outcomes meet the required quality standards and align with the organization's quality management framework.
Create a written document that defines quality
Develop procedures
Develop work instructions
Collect data
Quality training
Program Communication Management: Establishing effective communication channels to keep stakeholders informed about the program's progress, challenges, and achievements.
Program Closure: This process involves formally closing the program, assessing its overall success against the defined benefits and objectives, and documenting lessons learned for future reference.
These Program Processes work in conjunction with Project Processes, which govern the individual projects within the program.
The integration and coordination of both program-level and project-level processes are critical for successful program management and the realization of strategic objectives.
Program Reporting
Program Reporting gives management a view of how all the projects within a program are doing.
Usually done in a Program Reporting Working Session with the different project managers of projects that are included in the program.
Program Management KPIs
Commonly used program management KPIs can be divided into four categories:
financial
customer-focused
operational
business capability KPIs
Financial KPIs
Program managers might track some financial metrics for the business as a whole, as doing so can reflect the success of a broad and far-reaching program.
They also may track financials specific to the program, such as the following example KPIs:
Earned Value:
Managers often track this KPI in projects, but it can also be useful to track this in a program.
Earned value refers to the amount of money or budget that was authorized for work that’s been completed up until that point. In a program, this might include the original amount of money designated for the completion of a certain number of projects within the program, which you complete in phases. If your teams have successfully completed three out of five projects within a program, and the budget to complete those three projects was set at $500,000, then the earned value of your program so far is $500,000.
Actual Cost: Managers track this metric in projects, and can also track it in programs. - Using the above example, the actual cost to complete those three projects — regardless of the $500,000 budget — may have been $600,000.
Cost Performance Index:
This KPI uses the earned value and actual cost to determine how well your program is completing work on budget.
The cost performance index is the ratio of earned value to actual cost. - Using the above figures, this program’s cost performance index would be $500,000/$600,000, or 0.833. - Any figure under 1.0 means that your program is currently over budget.
Return on Investment for Program:
Organizational leaders calculate return on investment (ROI) with many organizational investments. They can do the same with many programs.
A broad program, for example, might include many projects to improve customer experience on a company’s e-commerce website.
After a year of operating the program, program leaders might track ROI on that program.
For example, they might track increased sales or the decrease in customers abandoning their online carts and completing a sale.
Program Management KPIs
Commonly used program management KPIs can be divided into four categories:
Financial
Customer-focused
Operational
Business capability KPIs
Financial KPIs
Customer-Focused KPIs
Many programs will focus on customers:
attracting and retaining more of them
increasing their satisfaction
taking other actions that help customers
The KPIs for these programs also must focus on customers in ways that can show whether operations are or aren’t improving.
Examples of customer-focused KPIs include the following:
Success Rate: This is the measure of success in meeting any of the various customer-focused goals that a program may establish. The success rate might mean keeping the average customer on your website for 20 percent longer, or increasing the average sale of all customers by 10 percent because of how your website offers suggestions for accessory products. There could be a wide variety of goals, and you’ll want to track how you’re doing in meeting any of them.
Customer Satisfaction: Your team can measure customer satisfaction through various means. Two of the most common ways are customer reviews of your service and product ratings. Measure these things before the beginning of a program focused on customer satisfaction, and then again as the program progresses.
Customer Retention: You can measure the percentage of customers you retain to become repeat customers, both before and after a program starts, to make changes.
Customer Engagement: Your team might often measure customer engagement through digital measures, including how long a customer stays on your website or uses your software as a service (SaaS) tool. But, you can measure customer engagement in other ways, such as how often your customers or potential customers interact with your sales teams.
Operational KPIs
You may also want to track a range of internal operational measures.
These are not direct customer metrics, but ones that measure the efficiency and effectiveness of operations, insofar as they affect how you engage with customers.
Operational KPIs measure operations that can affect your revenue and profits, depending on how well or how poorly they are working.
Some examples of operational KPIs are as follows:
Scheduled Performance Index: This metric is similar to the cost performance index. It is a ratio of earned value to planned value. Earned value is what your program has completed. Planned value is what you expected the program to have completed by this point in the project.
Component Delivery Rates: This metric measures how well the projects and other components of your program are doing their work. Are projects delivering certain products and materials as expected? This level of success will have an effect down the line, as other parts of the program might depend on these completed products.
Timeliness of Component Delivery: This metric is related to component delivery rate. It focuses not only on whether components are delivered, but also on whether they are delivered on schedule.
Business Capability KPIs
These KPIs focus on how your program is improving your organization’s overall capabilities.
They are similar to operational KPIs, but focus more on the strategic value and goals of your organization.
Project Completion Rates: Your program might depend on projects being completed on time.
Ask:
What are your project completion rates?
What percentage of your projects are completing their work on time?
What percentage of your projects are failing to complete their work at all?
Communications Effectiveness:
Your program and the projects within the program will be hurt by ineffective communications among team members.
Ask: How effective are your communications in helping ensure clarity and progress?
You can measure communications effectiveness in a number of ways, including timeliness and how knowledgeable team members are about communications that have occurred.
Team Performance:
You can measure your team’s performance in a number of ways. For instance, you might measure productivity rates among team members in various ways, or team members’ adherence to project deadlines.
The “Health” of Your Teams: Always monitor and assess how well your teams are working together. You’ll also want to assess how aligned their work is with the mission of the organization, how committed they are to the organization’s core principles, and a range of similar ideas and metrics.
Expected Program Benefits vs. Actual:
While you’ll track specific metrics on how the program is doing, the program charter or management plan will set out some primary goals and expectations of benefits from the program that you will always be tracking.
Periodically, you should also monitor actual results — compared to the goals — in some of those primary areas, and make adjustments when needed.
Speed to Learning:
Speed to learning is about how quickly your company can understand how customers are reacting to a product or service, and how quickly you can adjust.
Time to Make Decisions:
You can and should track how long it takes your program teams, or your company, to make important decisions relating to a program.
Quicker isn’t always better, of course.
But, your company will be able to track when the metric shows that important decisions are taking too long for your company to be nimble and effective.
Internal Customer Satisfaction:
External customer satisfaction is vital, but it’s not the only thing you should be tracking.
Your program will have a number of key stakeholders.
Some may be outside the company; many will be leaders and important players within your company.
Your program can and should track their satisfaction in a number of ways.
That might be through simple surveys, or it could be through tracking the number of questions or complaints from stakeholders.
It will tell you how successful the program is or whether it quickly needs to make changes.
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