Effective programme management

What is programme management? Programme management is defined for the purposes of this paper as the orchestration of a portfolio of projects effecting organisational change to deliver business benefits of strategic importance. (Note: This is the definition used by a joint initiative of the National Computing Centre (www.ncc.co.uk) and the DSDM Consortium (www.dsdm.org) to create a business-focused programme management method for the benefit of UK Plc.) All major e-commerce initiatives are very likely to fall within this definition as they will require changes to the business communication channels and realignment of staff and operations, as well as the new IT systems. In order to manage major business change initiatives or programmes successfully, an interim level of management is needed that lies between the executive level where strategic decisions are made, based on the changing internal and external business environments, and the operational level, where the business performs its day-to-day activities. This level of management will plan, co-ordinate and manage the individual projects that each contribute in some way towards the achievement of the business change be it a new line of e-business or any other major change to the business operations and organisational structure. The constituent projects should be grouped into tranches of work each of which enables one or more business benefits. How such grouping is done is outlined later on in this article.