Project Management and Program Management

There are various discussions I heard recently on the responsibilities of Program Manager and Project Manager. In most of the discussions Program manager is much highlighted than project manager while it’s isn’t like that. But of course I believe it’s a glorified title of project management.

In 1980’s Jabe Blumenthal at Microsoft identified this special job to coordinate the engineering efforts with business and marketing side of each division. Program manager will be involved in project from the day one of planning and the last day of testing. It had to be someone who at least technically-respectable by programmers and also at the same time to involve in a broader participation in how the products were made.

An excellent project management book “The Art of Project management” by Scott Berkun has clearly distinguished what’s project management and program management and I think it’s the only book explained about this topic in such a nice way. He define program management as

He’ll be mostly involved in various tasks like writing specifications, reviewing market plans, generating project schedules, leading teams, doing strategy planning, tracking bugs, cultivating team morale and anything else that needed to be done that no one else was doing.

Not every member of the team would report directly to the program manager but he’ll be granted authority to lead and drive the project. In other ways, there will be functional and project reporting points for an individual programmer. I believe we’ve no doubt on the role of project manager.

Even the role Program manager is not defined in many companies, there are many managers doing both project management and program management. Large companies like Microsoft are clearly implemented and has scope for that particular role. But in small companies, dedicated program managers are rare and that role is handled by the project manager and his delegates.