Programme Management

As Chris Walters writes in the foreword to my new book ‘Leading Successful PMOs’ (Gower) – ‘The role of the PMO leader is one for a particular breed of individual. Be clear: this is a very senior position in any organisation that takes project delivery seriously – the days of co-ordinating project administrators are over. PMO...
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1. Introduction I know that the previous entry said that we had reached the end of the set of articles. However, that is no reason to stop! There is always more to learn or understand. This document provides a recipe for implementing the Earned Benefit approach explained previously. 2. Cooking steps – from a to z 1 First, definition and planning...
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A programme is typically made up of a mixture of inter-related projects, stand-alone projects and operational activities all of which could be impacted by risks. Traditionally, we make each project manager accountable for the risks in their project. They ensure that risks to their project are identified, analysed and then escalated to the programme level...
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1. Introduction The programme has reached the point at which the benefits realisation plan has been approved by the Executive Manager, and the corresponding resources have been made available for deployment in accordance with the plan. 2. Benefits Realisation This phase is composed of one or several, serial, overlapping stages, each of which delivers incremental benefits. The steps in any...
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1. Introduction This is the conclusion of the set of articles looking at benefits realisation mangement for programmes. It returns to the concepts explored in the very first part, in order to explain how the life cycles of programmes and of benefits management can be dovetailed together in order to provide a consistent management framework. This...
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The previous entry explained the concept of Earned Benefit in order to evaluate “percent complete” of a programme. This entry takes the idea still further and extends the ideas to allow monitoring of programme costs as well. 1.    Earned Benefit Variables 1.1    Benefits Performance Index The Benefit Performance Index at a given “data date” is (Earned Benefit)...
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Part 3 ended with the Benefits Realisation Plan established. All that remains in the Benefits Analysis and Planning phase is to establish monitoring.  This part describes a development of the project management Earned Value method to cater for programmes. This Earned Benefit method should then be used for tracking, forecasting and reporting (“Monitor Components” and...
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The term often used in programme management – in fact it is even used in the PMI Standard for Programme Management 2nd Edition – is Stakeholder Management. In reality Stakeholder Engagement is what we need to aspire to, as ‘managed’ stakeholders often find a way to avoid being managed!  Engaged stakeholders are actively involved and...
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One of the major stumbling blocks about understanding what programme management is, really is about the difficulty in focusing on benefits rather than deliverables. With a single project – here we can take the definition of a project from the Fourth Edition of the PMBOK® Guide -  “a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique...
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Part 2 examined the Benefits Management life cycle to half-way through Benefits Analysis and Planning. In this Part 3 Kik Piney explains the final steps leading of analysis and planning up to establishing the benefits realisation plan: The benefits have been identified; the metrics have been derived; the components have been derived (but...
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