When your company is dealing with more than one project and this occurs for the larger companies, you face the challenge to align these projects with the main strategy.

A program manager could be held responsible for managing a set or portfolio of projects. In fact this manager manages project managers. And the project manager manages a project.

Any individual project manager could have its own approach or style (article title: “two types of project managers”). In fact this could apply also for program managers. One could be more involved with the content of the program than the other.

There is however an additional challenge the program manager faces, something the project manager is less concerned with. This challenge is about the alignment of the program with the strategy of the company.

How do you as a program manager align all these individual projects? How do you make sure all the projects serve the main goal?

The solution to handle this can vary in many ways but obvious there are not too many flavors. You can either place this alignment as a communication responsibility in every project. Or you can separate this alignment on to a central level.

The decision to choose for either way is dependent on the type of your organization behind the program. If your organization is highly competitive with specific autonomous units that have their own targets and (project) budgets, then you should set the alignment outside these projects. In this way you are most probable that you will able to align the individual projects to a shared goal and shared quality.

© 2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days.

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