IT Program Management: Shared Vision

IT Program Management: Shared Vision

David Diaz Castillo, MBA, PMP Panama City, Panama

ORGANIZATIONS OFTEN GROUP SEVERAL RELATED individual technology projects into a larger program. The strategy is to complete these projects in a more cost-effective way and to bring strategic benefits to the organization by avoiding overlap or gaps. However, it is vital that the software project manager convey to the project team members the real business objective that their individual project must achieve, as well as how this team aligns to the other projects. Team members must also understand how the achievement of their specific project goals contrib- utes to the success or failure of the overall program objectives.

Here are some key tasks:

Find the connections that expand the importance of this project beyond its mere standalone value.

Definetherelationships,deliverables,andriskssharedamongallprojects in the program.

Keep all the team members in alignment with the final solution that the program is trying to achieve.

Understand the business, to propose solutions aligned to the strategic objectives of the program as the inevitable problems appear.

This concept of bundling projects into programs is not very mature in Latin America yet, but we are gaining experience managing programs with a com- mon set of governance policies. Clearly there are rich benefits to be found when each team has a clear vision of the entire program goals, not just its own project work.

The most difficult thing is getting the buy-in from vendors, clients, sponsors, and other stakeholders. We need to analyze their interests, requirements, and needs to be sure that there is value for each of them when we group technical projects. Every group must gain more value than if its project was completed in a vacuum.

Particularly when customers span many countries, they will all have different ideas of how technology should be created, and unique organizational proce- dures and processes. Agreement and approval on internationally recognized program management practices is fundamental in order to begin the align- ment of all stakeholders to program goals.

To have a successful methodology, we need common, but flexible, documents or templates to use for all projects. When we manage information technology programs, we typically need goods or services from vendors with their own unique methodology and templates, or outputs from other projects being run simultaneously with our own. So, before we begin, all parties have to agree which documents we are going to use.

What will our project management methodology be? If individual project teams can’t agree on what methodology, procedures, processes, and integrated change control steps will be adopted by all teams, the smooth codevelopment of projects to serve the greater program good will fail. When choosing, the software project manager needs to ask the team which templates and practices are reasonable and useful to help it execute and control its projects efficiently.

Once you have a common process and document/template tools, you are in a position to coordinate technical projects into programs. These provide greater value to your customer and your organization than single projects done alone.