The Criteria for Program Management

This second article in our series on Program Management (PGM), focuses on what it takes to manage a program successfully, and looks at the limitations of today's PM tools, which have evolved to handle multiple projects but do not handle the project meta data that is critical to a Program. This section examines in detail the 10 functional criteria that CS sees are critical for PGM tools, and moves on to examine how complexity and collaboration challenge the effectiveness of today's PM tools. By using a typical PGM scenario to help explain some of the complexity issues that define PGM we can highlight some of the key differentiators between PM and PGM tools (specifically models vs. templates).The Rise of Program Management Tools

As project management tools have evolved, they have added more and more capabilities. But have they added the right features and functions to make them program management tools? We believe that there are 10 basic elements that need to be managed through all phases of a project cycle. If the management of these elements is important to a single project, think how critical they might be to someone managing a program of 50, 200 or 1000 projects? The basic project elements include: