The Evolution of Program Management

I love to understand how these terms of Program, Portfolio, Agile, Business Agility, Organisation Maturity, etc, emerged – what was the context in which newer techniques and ways of working evolve. Sometime back I had written on the topic of “History of Project Management”. In the coming blogs, I am going to write about Agile as a methodology and its practices on how they evolved. Somewhere, all are connected – sometimes they differ by perspective, through context and sometimes, they are really different and compliment each other.

Let’s now explore the evolution of Program Management.

Program Management is a very recent phenomenon and many still use Project Management and Program Management terms interchangeably. Many wonder if a Program is really different from Project Management? Or it is just a cluster of many projects? Or a higher position than a Project Manager? Or something else?

I have attempted to answer these questions and more and tried to cover the evolution of Program Management with the help of some scholarly articles from PM World Journal Vol. VII, Issue III – March 2018 (www.pmworldjournal.net) with featured paper by Dr. Pieter Steyn, Elzabe Zovitsky.

 If you look at the above diagram, you can get the evolution of project management at a quick glimpse.

To summarise quickly, the following periods categorize the evolution

• 1960 to 1980 – focus on reducing time
• 1980 – Focus on Quality
• 1990 – Projects increase bottom-line; enterprise phenomenon from a product based approach; matrix structures
• 2000 onwards – Benefits driven approach by Organizations
• 2020 – Now what? Business Agility?

 The organizations of today are more focussed on Business Agility producing value and achieving business outcomes. A competitive edge is gained by collaboratively performing strategic activities more effectively and efficiently.

It was identified that during the 1970’s and 1980’s organisations reoriented research and development (R&D) management to consolidate, readjust costing and shorten the path between knowledge and new technologies. Moreover, during this time, more of matrix organisational structures were started getting used. The focus was transferred from the product to the entire business system. Planning, production and product marketing were integrated into the entire process that enhanced systems, flexible innovation processes and networking models with customers and suppliers.

Early Period Literature suggests that the terminologies ‘program’ and ‘project’ have been used interchangeably since the 1960s and particularly in the US Department of Defence and NASA.

There was no definite distinction between the usage of ‘programs’ and ‘projects’ at that time, and large projects were often described as programs. According to Weaver (2007), the Manhattan initiative to create the atomic bomb in the 1940's was probably the first program, while since the 1950's numerous programs crystallised in the US military.

At the start of 2000 program management and benefits delivery became high priorities in many organisations, rather than knowing when the project would be completed and at what cost.

When practitioners started applying project management to more complex projects, the management of strategic objectives and the management of multiple interrelated projects, they realised the limitations of traditional project management techniques. According to Michel Thiry (2010), studies done in 1996/97 found that upto 30% of all projects were cancelled before being completed. Traditional project management methods were identified as the reason for the failure to respond to emergency situations, ambiguity and the lack of integration between strategic intent and project deliverables. Around the same time program management emerged as a distinct discipline. Michel Thiry (2010:13) avers that this could be as a result of the maturing of project management and the development of “what the PMI has called Organizational Project Management”.

In 1976 the term ‘program’ was described as a “long-term undertaking” usually consisting of more than one project (or) used synonymously with a project. Wideman (2003:3) described programs and projects as “strategic investments and management in a portfolio”. McElroy (1996) and Pellegrinelli (1997) describe a program as a framework for grouping existing projects and/or defining new ones. They opined that these projects were managed in a coordinated way, either to achieve a common goal or to extract benefits, which would otherwise not be realised if they were managed independently.

From the above it is clear that program management was seen solely in the context of a collection of projects.

Pellegrinelli (1997) identified three types of programs with the aim of making the concept more understandable. Each of these programs is based on specific motivations for its creation:

1. Portfolio programs: A collection of projects managed in such a way as to extract certain benefits and for the transfer of knowledge and learning. These projects are seen as relatively independent of one another, but use common resources.
2. Goal-orientated programs: Execute changes through initiating, shaping, and integrating of multiple projects. The term also deals effectively with situations where uncertainty prevails and learning is a prerequisite for making progress. These programs lend it to translate incomplete, emerging and evolving business strategies into tangible actions and new developments. That can be called strategic initiatives.
3. Heartbeat programmes: Projects that enable the improvement of existing systems, business processes, and infrastructure. These programs provide the integrative framework and processes for business requests for extra functionality, capacity, or changes to core processes.

According to Haughey (2001:8-9), a growing interest in program management developed owing to its ability to deliver strategic benefits to organisations, and ‘assist’ them to remain competitive in the global marketplace.

With the advent of more interest in program management, global bodies such as PMI, Axelos started to sense a business opportunity and agreed on the definition of Program as Related projects, subsidiary programs, and program activities managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually

And with its’ global reach, advocated Program Management and promoted it successfully across geographies and organizations with the certification course of Program Management Certification (PgMP).

PMI has seen a global increase of practitioners adopting program management practices. Even from my experiences with people doing Program Management certification, they are implementing some techniques such as Benefits Register or doing Program Formulation which is helping organizations achieve benefits in a more predictable manner.

However, many individuals involved in traditional project management struggle to understand the unique nature of program management. The problem such individuals have is that, although programs are bigger and more complex than projects, they believe the same basic approach and technique can be applied to the management of a program. Even a shift in focus from output to outcome as a distinguishing feature is incorrectly perceived by them as hardly new!!! Moreover, they argue that programs simply represent “another level in a pyramid of increasing scope and complexity”.

Program Management is definitely different from project management and requires different skill sets than that of Project Manager. I have written a number of blogs and done webinars that Program Manager has a different skill set and his / her goal is different from that of Project Manager (https://www.prothoughts.co.in/all-blogs/) And yes, organizations require all kinds of people (read it as Portfolio Managers, Program Managers, Project Managers (which can include Agile practitioners)) to achieve organisational goals (such as Increased Profits, Increased Market share, etc.). Tomorrow's organizations will be multi-speed organizations with different project practices and, programs & portfolios will be able to tie up (integrate) these different projects effectively to achieve organizations goals and pivot organizations in the right direction.

Project Management as a space is becoming more complex and more ambiguous with the shrinking world and high competitiveness. And with businesses being more driven by technology - there lies infinite possibilities and hence, today projects are not easily predictable.

The Project Management space will evolve much more rapidly now than it evolved in last 60 odd years.

My hunch is that what it took 60 years to reach till today (i.e., 2020) , the next 10 years (from 2020 to 2030) will see that much evolution of last 60 years (And I am conservative here :)).

The Project Management space is going to be more exciting and will be a great enablement for businesses if they are done in the right way!

Look for this space for more updates and I will be more regular from now.

Happy Reading! and let me know your thoughts and comments.