October 13, 2023 PMO Training
What is the difference between a program manager and a project manager?
The simplest way to think about this might be that a program contains a series of projects. Frankly it’s a loose term in the industry. Here at BYU we generally have Service Managers acting as Program Managers.
A project should be a clearly defined set of tasks that when completed achieve the desired goal. For example, if we say we want to build a website for our PMO team - that’s a project. There is a post-operational component to keep that website up and running and valuable. The post project work would be called maintenance or operations in the business world.
A program takes a long-term view of one or more products. The program could include both a series of projects and maintenance/operations on products.
I think the important thing is to not get too focused on one set of definitions. Rather, think about what the business requires.
Very often Program Managers are senior in the organization and they hold a lot of power to make decisions on market, budget, direction, roadmaps, etc. The best Program Managers are tightly connected with strategy and tightly aligned with the strategic leaders of the organization.
They direct the initiation and the execution of the projects that are needed to accomplish the program goals.
One example comes from a company I worked for called CorVel. We provided AI rules that automatically digitized and optimized medical billing in the workers comp industry. The Program Manager reported to the CEO of the company. She was equal to the CIO. The CIO had three Vice Presidents (I was one) who reported to him. The work priorities came from the Program Manager and we created projects and operational processes that drove the execution of the core product vision, which accounted for about $250m in revenue and 75% of the company’s profit. That is an example of how a major program and product could be managed.
In this article, I provide eight ideas based on my experiences in industry to help you understand the type of person you need to be, and the type of work you have to do, in order to be a successful senior program/product/project manager...
Read the rest of the training in the link above.