Wondering About Work Streams?

A series of articles about project, programme, portfolio and enterprise change presented in a manageable, bitesized way.

Article 4. What is a workstream and/or a work package?

A quick summary so far; projects are the vehicles for delivery as they have fixed goals, time and cost. A programme is a wrapper for group of related projects that combine to realise a strategic aim. A portfolio is a BAU function that manages all projects and programmes, normally for a business division, provides the funding and prioritises them based on capability and capacity to deliver.

With few exceptions, the above definitions have been universally agreed at all of the places I’ve worked at.

Work packages and work streams are not so common and so I’d like to shed some light on these.

Work packages. This terminology comes from PRINCE2. In a nutshell a work package is an agreed unit of work that the project manager will define to the ‘worker’. The parameters are agreed and once the work is done, and meets the success criteria, then the PM signs off on the work. This lends itself perfectly for a nuclear power station since each unit of work needs to be controlled.

Work streams are a different story and honestly are my bugbear because I‘ve heard clients use ‘work stream’ to mean ‘project’, ‘programme’ or ‘theme’ and other things. Each person has their own definition and mine is this. A work stream is a common theme that sits within a programme but cuts across multiple projects. For example I was working on an offshoring programme and each transition of work overseas was a project, however there were themes which were common to all of the projects. In the case of our offshoring programme we had a few work streams IT, HR, Communications. Each work stream produce outputs that belong to a PROJECT, but are co-ordinated for ALL projecs to ensure consistency. They would have a DEDICATED person to manage that stream of activity and report progress into each project manager. The programme manager would also get updates as it’s a co-ordinated activity.

Hope that makes sense.

Next up Product Management.