Ultimately, program managers are judged on results. Creating a positive program culture that facilitates excellent project management should produce excellent results. Having the correct program manager attributes, knowing how to manage stakeholders, implementing the most effective program process strategy, deploying good execution processes, building strong program teams, planning well-organized program communication processes, performing change management, ensuring thorough risk management, and linking the program to organizational strategy are pathways to program clarity and success.
This 5 part Guide to Positive Program Outcomes helps you assess the success of your programs.
Part 1 of 5: Creating Positive Customer Satisfaction
Part 2 of 5: Institutionalize Plagiarism
Part 3 of 5: Program Performance Analysis Metrics
Part 4 of 5: Program Performance Analysis Judgment
Part 5 of 5: Closing Thoughts
Part 5 of 5: Closing Thoughts
Presence, relationship building, consistency, effective questioning, decision making, and mentoring are all program management leadership traits. The program manager also needs doggedness. Since programs are continual in nature, the program manager must persevere in good times and bad, all the while remaining focused on program objectives, improving the program’s ability to execute, and increasing the capability of program personnel.
At the program level, many of the problems you are trying to fix are entrenched in culture, process, and tradition. These problems are not easily or instantaneously fixed; you must continually hammer at them over a period of time before a breakthrough can be achieved. The following quote from the noted journalist Jacob Riis applies to the program manager:
When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
Creating positive culture change involves relentless hammering away by the program manager, who must have the doggedness to get used to deferred gratification. The resulting positive changes often reveal themselves later, when previous actions that helped facilitate the changes may be forgotten.
Once your team has decided on their plan and process, PPM software can help you execute that process. WorkOtter helps you successfully execute your program process strategy for project success. Get a demo of WorkOtter and see how we can make your program management effective.
“The Handbook of Program Management: How to Facilitate Project Success with Optimal Program Management, Second Edition” by James T. Brown is a copyrighted work of McGraw-Hill and McGraw-Hill reserves all rights in and to the Content. ©2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. Purchase the book on Amazon.
