One bit of confusion that can plague anyone who is not familiar with the Management profession is confusing both project managers and Program managers as the same career.
After all, aren't these two professions the same? They're both managers.
They both manage people and the product as a whole. How could they not be the same thing?
Knowing the difference is key - especially with the rise of remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic. According to ,Workplace Insight, 88% of remote workers deal with leadership that is completely inconsistent and even contradictory with their colleagues. This means that more than ever, you have to maintain an orderly workforce - especially when it comes to developing a product in an ever-changing, fast-moving market landscape. Knowing the difference between Program Managers and Project Managers is key to aligning your (remote) workforce together to fulfill a congruent goal. The opposite is also inverse: placing a program management consultant in the position of a Project Manager can cost you golden opportunities to fulfill and complete multiple projects and generate traction for your organization today.
In this article, we're going to concisely describe the following:
- what does each professional do?
- how are these 2 professionals are the same but also vastly different?
- when you should employ a Project Manager versus a Program Manager?
- Moreover, if you can't employ a program manager directly when you should you use a consultant to help bridge that gap until your company can employ one directly in-house?
By the end of this article, you should have a solid understanding of how these 2 professionals operate and which situations to best employ them in.
What Does Each Professional Do?
Before knowing when to employ either of them, you should know what each professional does. In short, project managers manage projects while program managers manage programs. From the outset, these may sound like the same thing but they are very much different from each other. Projects tend to have a shorter time span. They are usually more specific, have a definite timeline, and have concrete deliverables associated with them.
Programs, on the other hand, are a network of projects - usually assembled to fulfill an overall general objective for the organization. In other words, programs are a network of projects that concurrently work together to fulfill an overall congruent goal. If you operate within an enterprise, you can employ an in-house manager to handle projects or programs.
However, you can also employ consultants if you are looking to leverage an externally outside perspective to help guide your projects or your programs to completion.
What Does a Project Management Consultant Do?
Project managers are more focused on a specific project: hence, their title. They tend to be involved with assigned projects for a shorter time frame. You know what a schedule is for a Project Manager: usually, because the Project Timeline dictates everything that they have to do - per project. Because project managers are assigned to specific projects, they have to achieve narrow objectives that are specific to the project itself. It can be that project is core to the product itself but most of your Project Manager's attention is focused on completing each project, respectively. Your Project Manager can even focus on different assigned projects; however, if they are to achieve narrow objectives and deliver concrete end products per project, then they are Project Managers. Because of this, they must have above-average management skills to guide projects from start (or whenever they are assigned to projects within the timeline) to finish. They have to directly work with various types of professionals (developers, marketers, designers, etc.) to complete a project. A Project Manager is a (sniper) rifle in your arsenal to shoot down specific problems such as overbudgeted projects, missed deadlines, and unclear communication.
What Does a Program Management Consultant Do?
Now that you understand what a Project Manager does, what does a program manager do?
If Project Managers are the sniper rifles within your arsenal, then Program Managers are the shotguns within your arsenal. As mentioned before, program managers deal with a network of projects: however, what does that even mean? They are more broadly focused on achieving a "grander goal" than their project management counterpart.
Program Managers have a longer time frame with your organization versus Project Managers because they are dealing with (multiple) projects concurrently. Their objective is to lead each project to achieve a congruent goal for the organization. Whereas Project Managers are deeply focused on the statuses of each project from start to finish, Program Managers need to ensure that each active project is worthwhile to the health of the entire organization. Some projects may be canceled because the organization is moving in another direction than previously when that project was first started. Simply put, Program Managers oversee a slew of several different projects to fulfill the overall goal of your organization.
How Do They Work?
Now that you have a clear description of what each professional does, you should now understand the similarities and the differences between these two professionals. On the outset, using our example from before, they are both guns within your arsenal to shoot down your target(s) of inconsistent team communication, missed deadlines, and over-budgeted projects. The difference is within the range and the scope that these bullets are deployed.
However, you must understand how each weapon within your arsenal works for you.
The difference is how are they are employed.
What Makes Project Managers and Program Managers the Same?
Project Managers and Program Managers often use similar skill sets to finish their objectives. Both professionals have to be well-organized to complete their goals.
On top of that, both management professionals are constantly dealing with different related professionals and stakeholders. In addition, similarly, what makes great management professionals is that they have a wide array of different skill sets and they can apply that wide array of different skill sets (and even multi-domain expertise) into their management duties for the organization. In other words, you don't want just a great Project Manager who is only great at being a great Project Manager and nothing else. The same can also be said of employing a Program Manager who is only great at being a program management professional - and nothing else. Having someone with multiple domains of expertise within both fields is super important in both careers within your organization. Adding to that point, you have to understand what industry that your organization is in.
Project management (and by that token, even program management) is a broad field of professional expertise that covers many industries - beyond just software. While there are management consultants who can excel at various fields because of their vastly-acquired domains of expertise and wide breadth of experience, choosing a Program Manager or a Project Manager who matches what you need is vitally important. For example, if your organization is in the construction industry, finding a Project Manager who has only worked in agile environments with software companies would be a horrible fit. Instead, you would be better off finding a Project Manager who is more familiar with a Waterfall project management style with experience in construction projects. Outside of their scope of governance, these two professions are similar.
What Makes Project Managers and Program Managers Different?
However, it is also their scope of management that makes them different. Earlier, we've mentioned how these two professionals complete their objectives in terms of the scope of what is being managed. Project management professionals are managing the projects themselves. They are doing everything in their power to move the project to completion with provable deliverables, preferably within deadlines. Program management professionals are different as they have to oversee an entire suite of projects to fulfill the overall strategy of your organization. The best way to tell the difference between these two professionals is to understand who the management professional is reporting to. Project management professionals are usually reporting to a supervisor and their assigned team members to the project itself. However, program management professionals are usually reporting to several different stakeholders because of the large breadth of projects that they are managing. In short, project management professionals are managing (several) 'micro-projects while program management professionals are managing several related projects in a large 'macro'-program for the organization.
When to Employ Which Management Professional and Why?
Now that you understand the similarities and the differences between a Project Manager and a Program Manager, that effectively puts you ahead of your competition. Seriously, ,According to PMI, 80% of employees spend half of their workweek on “rework” caused by poor communication, and 46% of team leaders mention facing difficulty in completing project deadlines, ,according to Capterra. Having a specific understanding of when to use which management is key to not just completing (software) projects but also which set of projects that you should employ to fulfill a greater goal. However, the bigger question that you want to answer is: when is the best time to employ each specific professional?
When to Employ Project Managers?
The best time to employ Project Managers is when you have a critical project that you need to employ a capable project management professional upon. Usually, if you are working in a startup, you will more than likely need a Project Manager more so than you would need a Program Manager. That is never to say that you will never need a Program Manager.
This has more to do with the size of your company and your organization. In a smaller-sized organization, it makes sense that a CEO or an outside counsel would serve more of a Program Manager role instead. Since you are not building a suite of products as a startup - especially when your best course of action is to focus to develop the core product or a minimum viable product, everything would have to be dedicated to building and growing a product that your end-users will continue to use continuously. The best time to use a Project Managers is when you are trying to finish specific projects. You need someone to be super-focused on the project (rather than the organization) as a whole. These are the best times to employ Project Managers to solve particular problems for your organization.
When to Employ Program Managers?
The best time to employ Program Managers is when you have several different projects that are concurrently active however you are not sure if these projects are worth continuing.
As always, you must have a North Star that your organization can follow to make the right decisions faster - as well as avoid bad and time-wasting decisions quicker, too. When you have several active projects but at the same time, you understand that your organization is not gaining traction at all, then you will need a Program Manager who can unite your projects together. A helpful Program Manager should help you understand your organization's "North Star" and effectively direct all relevant projects to fulfill those said goals for your organization.
After all, there may be active projects within your organization that you've assigned some poor Project Managers to complete - and it's a complete waste of time, to begin with.
Having a capable Program Manager who understands which project remains active and which projects should be shuttered helps you save costs and move your organization to fulfill your organization-wide objective more swiftly.
"In-House versus Consultant?"
By now, you should have a solid idea of:
- what each management professional does
- how they are the same
- what generally makes a great management professional
- the scope of their management duties to your organization
- when to best employ them
Now, when do you hire someone as a consultant versus someone in-house?
The answer is simpler than you can consider.
If you want someone who is completely dedicated to your organization as a management professional, then you would hire someone in-house.
- If you want to leverage a large breadth of expertise and backed experience with an outside perspective, you would employ a consultant.
These are largely dependent on what your priorities are and how your organization is structured. However, if you feel that you prefer having a management professional, ,feel free to book a free no-obligation meeting with me to see if I'm the right fit for you.
