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Vol. XIV Issue II - February 2012
Project Management eJournal
FEATURED PAPER
Program management: Types of relationships between a program’s component projects
By Alan Stretton, Ph D
Sydney, Australia
ABSTRACT
There is widespread agreement in the literature that a primary component of the program management task is the coordinated management of its related component projects. However there is surprisingly little material about the various ways in which the component projects can be related, and even less on the implications of such differences for their coordinated management.
This paper identifies some twenty different types of relationships between component projects from the literature, and then allocates them into four broad groups, based on an existing model in the literature re organizing projects in a program. One of these groups is relatively trivial, leaving three groups that are most relevant for program management.
A significant outcome of the resultant three-type groups is that the number of types of relationships cumulates as we move from a predominantly independent component project group, through a partially interdependent component project group, to a substantially interdependent component project group. This has substantial implications for the nature of program management involvement in managing such relationships, which it is proposed to discuss in a following paper.
The different types of relationships between a program’s component projects discussed in this paper are derived from the literature. It is therefore not claimed that all relevant relationships have been identified. However, it is suggested that the classifications identified could serve as a useful basis for developing a more consolidated list of different types of relationships amongst a program’s component projects.
INTRODUCTION
Three prominent organizations that define/describe programs and their management are the UK’s Association of Project Management in its APM Body of Knowledge, 5th Edition (APM 2006); the UK’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in its Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) 3rd Edition (OGC 2007); and North America’s Project Management Institute in it’s The Standard for Program Management (PMI 2006a):
Programme management is the co-ordinated management of related projects, which may include business-as-usual activities that together achieve a beneficial change of a strategic nature for an organization. (APM 2006)
In MSP, a programme is defined as a temporary, flexible organization created to coordinate, direct and oversee the implementation of a set of related projects and activities in order to deliver outcomes and benefits related to the organisation’s strategic objectives. (OGC 2007)
Program. A group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually. Programs may include elements of related work outside of the scope of the discrete projects in the program. (PMI 2006a)
The key components that these definitions have in common are that program management involves the coordinated management of related component projects. (They also include other related work, but this does not feature prominently in the more detailed discussions on program management, and is not further developed here).
If we accept this commonality in program definitions, it follows that we need to understand just how the component projects of any particular program relate to one another, if we are to effectively manage these relationships in a coordinated way. There appear to be several different types of relationships identified in the literature, and these are now explored.
More…
To read entire paper (click here)
About the Author Alan Stretton, PhD
Alan Stretton is currently a member of the Faculty Corps of the University of Management and Technology, Arlington, Virginia, USA. In 2006 he retired from a position as Adjunct Professor of Project Management in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, which he joined in 1988 to develop and deliver a Master of Project Management program. Prior to joining UTS, Mr. Stretton worked in the building and construction industries in Australia, New Zealand and the USA for some 38 years, which included the project management of construction, R&D, introduction of information and control systems, internal management education programs and organizational change projects. He has degrees in Civil Engineering (BE, Tasmania) and Mathematics (MA, Oxford), and an honorary PhD in strategy, programme and project management (ESC, Lille, France). Alan was Chairman of the Standards (PMBOK) Committee of the Project Management Institute from late 1989 to early 1992. He held a similar position with the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM), and was elected a Life Fellow of AIPM in 1996. He was a member of the Core Working Group in the development of the Australian National Competency Standards for Project Management. He has published over 100 professional articles. Alan can be contacted at alanailene@bigpond.com.au.
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