It's not uncommon for companies to assign a member of their workforce who has some bandwidth and operational expertise, to the role of programme manager. Or engage a 3rd party who has strong technical experience, but only a weak blend of the skills, attributes and capabilities required for effective programme management. This compromises the future of the programme from the very start.
In less than 9 minutes, the cartoon below takes a light-hearted look at the serious situation inside a fictitious firm, as Scott and Liz discuss the appointment of a programme manager for their $80 million K2 Programme.
During the conversation between Liz and Scott, Liz provides Scott with these two lists:
Activities the programme manager should perform:
- Programme planning and governance
- Programme and project integration management
- Programme scope management
- Programme time and cost management
- Programme quality management
- Programme human resource management
- Programme procurement management
- Programme risk management
- Programme reporting
- Stakeholder relationship management
- Benefit realisation management
Ten questions that a good programme manager should be asking:
- What integrated and holistic business transformation methodology are we using?
- How are we tracking progress and informing our various groups of stakeholders?
- How does the schedule and resource-list look, and how are they working together?
- How are we coordinating projects and programmes and ensuring they are aligned?
- What are the objectives and scope of each of the projects and programmes?
- How are we tracking time-and-costs and ensuring we are sticking to the budget?
- How are we ensuring we adopt best practices in terms of quality
- How are we ensuring that we have the right people in the right place at the right time?
- How are we ensuring delegation to 3rd party suppliers and optimising our spend?
- Who has assessed the health of the business transformation?