There was a question on a LinkedIn group earlier this week about a program with teams with interconnected features and how did you know when a feature was done. After all, a feature wasn’t done until all the teams were done with it. After a few more questions, I realized the teams were architectural teams, […]
I’ve been working with program teams lately, and some of them have issues when they talk about different teams on their programs when they use words such as “headquarters” and “remote” locations. The headquarters teams tell me the remote teams don’t listen to them and the remote teams tell me the headquarters teams don’t hear
The good news is that agile has name recognition. The bad news is that a number of organizations are trying to start agile in a big-bang way, especially on programs. Program management is hard enough without throwing a new approach to projects into the mix. Since so many of you are emailing me about this,
On the bike at the gym this morning, I thought about increasing my level. When I exercise, more friction is good. But when you develop or use products, more friction is bad. Brian Marick talks about this when he speaks and writes about “ease” for development teams. If you’ve encountered a web page that made
It’s a good thing I said my post about musings was just that–musings! I didn’t bring all of you along. Sorry about that. Let me be more clear. A program is a collection of projects, where the value is in the overall deliverable. Yes, each project may have a deliverable that’s valuable, but the value
I spoke with a program manager who’d been displaced from his program because he doesn’t scream or yell at people. (No, I’m not making this up. This is true.) He’s an effective program manager, because he doesn’t tell people to do this or that task. Instead, he tells them the goal and the results he’s
Glen Alleman has a post about program management, Managing Multiple Projects is Called Program Management which got me thinking. (I’ve written about program management in the past also: Program Management: Multiple Projects With Multiple Deliverables.) But in the portfolio management book, I defined a few ways to think about your projects as programs: You, and
Months ago, Debbie asked this question, “Do you have any comparative analysis on the disciplines (project management and program management) that you would like to share?” To me, program management is the ability to take a project or a series of projects and manage those (see Program Management: Multiple Projects With Multiple Deliverables) in the
Program management is the art of managing an effort of multiple projects with multiple deliverables. If you google “Program Management,” you’ll see a bunch of interesting posts, including Chris Pratley’s Program Management. To me, Chris is describing project management, albeit of a large project. When Chris talks about his “program” management, he’s discussing the coordination