Over my two decades of international experience, I have seen many people struggle to adapt to the world program management. They usually come from project management disciplines, and even the best project managers have difficulty understanding the differences between program and project management. They learn by trial and error. They don’t understand the complexity and importance of Business Change Management, which causes programs to fail, despite their ability to deliver the desired capability.
The sheer number of terms such as End to End Delivery Management and Business Change Management does not help. I have seen stakeholders exploit the gaps in clear roles and responsibilities to advance their interests. Many people never had the opportunity to work on all aspects, such as program management, due to long program durations. From initiation to benefits transition, and sustainment. This meant that they couldn’t experience the transformation from the current state to the beneficial future state. They may not have been able to see the big picture.
This gap is addressed by PMI’s Program Management Professional (PgMP), certification that is based on ‘The Standard for Program Management.
It provides program managers with a framework and guidelines to help them apply the program management framework to any program, regardless of industry or domain. It also allows program managers enough flexibility to adapt or modify the standard principles and methodology to fit the particular program or situation. This standard will be a great asset to the program team and organization. This standard is a great asset for Organisational Project Management (OPM), to improve the organization’s strategic execution capabilities.
As someone who has been involved in project and program management for a large part of my professional career, it is gratifying to be able to give back to the profession by training program management professionals to make real-world programs successful.
