PMcrunch

Program Management within an organization involves managing longer term initiatives that involve multiple projects. The Project Management Institute (PMI) offers a Program Management Certification – the Program Management Professional (PgMP) – for experienced professionals who are interested in advancing their knowledge of program management and credentials for a continuing career in program management.

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As leaders and professionals, we are called upon to be at our best all of the time! Not only to we need to maintain and improve personal performance, but we as project managers and program managers are frequently responsible for the performance of others. One challenge is how we manage the plethora of positive and negative feelings that inevitably come our way in the course of our professional endeavors. I have been thinking about how we can be more aware of what happens inside of us emotionally that needs to be managed in order to achieve top performance consistently.

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PRINCE2 – PRojects IN Controlled Environments – is a major worldwide project management framework, or methodology. It takes a different approach than the PMI’s PMBOK, but the goal of both is to improve project performance. While PMBOK is generally well-accepted worldwide, it is by far the leading approach in North America. PRINCE2 on the other hand is strongest in the United Kingdom, with a strong presence in Europe, Australia, and other typically English-speaking countries outside North America. But both are expanding there reach on a constant basis as the world gradually “projectizes.”

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Project reporting is very important because it enables us to keep our stake holders informed as to the project progress, decisions, achievements, and issues. However, often reporting is done around a certain specific format that you as a project manager, or your stakeholders, may find to fall short of the information needed – or worse, provide a lot of extraneous information that does not add value. It is important to capture the essence of project objectives and map them to the reporting routine.

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The old adage goes like this: “It is much better to tell someone what to do than how to do it”. Violation of this rule is often the cause for less than optimal performance. Here are some reasons why and some ways to handle this common management miscue.

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There is an interesting aspect to the relationship between processes and projects. Where processes are what keep a business flowing on a day to day basis, projects are what puts new processes in place, re-shapes existing processes, or replaces a process. Processes have lifecycle; most processes have a finite life. Thus projects have a very definite place in the lifecycle of processes.

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Earned value reporting is a powerful project management technique. It applies, one way or another, to ALL projects, large and small. What is important is to understand the concept, then adapting the application of the concept to an appropriate level that is effective for your projects.

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Leadership and management are not entirely different, but they are different in many ways. Comparing leadership and management is more accurately the comparison of a combination of strong leadership and management skill with a level of management skill where the leadership component is missing. It is a difficult comparison to make explicitly, but examples in real life abound!

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