Why all the confusion about programs and projects? How does portfolio management fit with all that?

1. What’s in a Name?
Programs, Portfolios and Projects
Douglas Brown, Ph.D., PgMP
dbrownpm@verizon.net
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2. Things that make you go “hmm”
• If these things keep happening to you
– What idiot came up with these arbitrary
deadlines and budgets?
– Project has been on hold for months because
we can’t get the right people (or it is slipping
because we are trying to do it with the wrong
people)
– We keep having the same problem over and
over. Everybody can see these problems but
nobody does anything about it
• Your program management is not working
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3. Contributing to the confusion …
• PMI’s early definition that a program is a
grouping of projects (since OBE)
• DoD uses the terms “program” and “acquisition”
loosely
– Calls everything a program, even when it is a project
– Does not call anything a project
– Projects last so long that they are really programs
• Federal “acquisition” dominated by “contracting”
• OMB is only interested in projects
• Steady-state consumes 50-80% of the resources
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4. What’s in a name?
• Avoids confusion (too late) • Gives you a starting point
– “Behold, the people is one, – Understanding your methodology
and they have all one means you know what you would
language, and this they begin do in the absence of other
guidance
to do: and now nothing will be
restrained from them which • Take what you can get
they have imagined to do” – Then, God be bless'd, it is the
– "When I use a word," Humpty blessed sun:
Dumpty said in a rather a – But sun it is not, when you say
it is not;
scornful tone, "it means just
– And the moon changes even as
what I choose it to mean --
your mind.
neither more nor less.
– What you will have it named,
"The question is," said Alice, even that it is;
"whether you can make words – And so it shall be so for
mean different things." Katharina.
"The question is," said Humpty – If they want to have a portfolio
Dumpty, "which is to be manager’s meeting instead of a
master -- that's all." “program review” – great!!
– Don’t let “red” become “green”
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5. Pick a Starting Point
Definitions – according to me …
• Program: a collection of activities (project and
sustainment) that establish and maintain solutions to
complex organizational objectives over an extended
period
– Programs are a continuous cycle of creation, life and death
• Project: a specific time-bounded effort to deliver a new
capability
– Projects deliver new capabilities
• Portfolio: a collection of some or all investments viewed
from a particular perspective with the intent of optimizing
that perspective *
– Selecting better apples from good apples
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* = deviation from PMI PGM standard

6. Alternative Frameworks
Project Level (PMBOK)
• Initiate
• Plan CPIC (both levels) - OMB
• Execute • Analyze or Pre-Select = Plan
• Control • Select = Initiate
• Close • No activity like Execute
• Control
Solution • Evaluate =Close
Program Level (PMI Program standard)
• Pre-Program Setup = Initiate
• Program Setup = Plan
and
Program Management and Technical Infrastructure
• Deliver the Benefits = Execute
• No activity like Control
• Close
Governance
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7. How it all fits Organizational
governance
Environment,
market or
higher
authorities Strategy
Portfolio
management
In theory …
Program plan Program-level reviews
Project-level reviews 7

8. Organizational governance
• Generally, done by a board
– Will require objective staff input to counter program spin
• Define missions, objectives, major programs External
authorities
• Allocate major resource pools
– Pie-slices; assumes competence of program planners
– Recursive
• Total reasonable requirements bubble up Strategy
• Acceptable ceilings push down
– Forms program baseline
• Confirm directions of programs
– Continued value, cost-benefit
• Resolve organization-wide issues
• Inquiry into specific critical activities
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9. Program management
• May be a person or a standing office
• Operates WITHIN constraints (baselines) established by
organizational governance
• Develop program-wide governance
• Program objectives
– Refine
– Allocate to “initiatives” – projects and sustainment
• Allocate resource pools
– Recursive
– Creates project/initiative baselines
• Oversee all projects and initiatives
Program plan Program-level reviews
– Conduct milestone reviews of initiatives
– Including in-service reviews
• Resolve program-wide issues
– Especially dependencies
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10. Recursive – cyclic
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Wait till next
What about these needs? year??!!
This is
bureaucratic
bull …
Cycle (Year) 1 Cycle (Year) 2
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11. Project Management
• Operates within baselines • Project manager masters
established at program the details
level – Integration
• Triple Constraint – Scope
– Cost – Schedule
– Schedule – Cost
– Scope – Performance – Quality
– Risk
• SDLC-based
– Communications
– Each phase / spiral /
iteration follows the SDLC – Procurement
– Resource
• Project manager is
generally a person with
ad-hoc staff 11

12. PMP skills return in PGMP – in a different way
• Scope, schedule, cost, quality:
– Baselines; High-level milestones and dependencies
• Procurements
– May be centralized, maybe not
– Program Office probably does not do detailed awards*
• Communications – different focus
– Building support and getting money
• Risk – program-wide
– Not as detailed. Search for common or institutional risks
• Resources – pools vs names. Human capital planning.
– One of most important efforts
– Skill set pools; depends on resourcing at initiative level
• Integration – the primary purpose
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* = deviation from PMI PGM standard

13. What about portfolios?
• Wall Street metaphor
– In the end, everything on Wall Street is a dollar
instrument
• Texts treat as a math problem
– Identify weighting factors
– Rate investments
– Rack and stack
– Deal from the top
• It doesn’t work that way
– Education > public safety?
– “Math” only works when you have relatively similar
items 13

14. Real-world portfolio management
Within program Enterprise Never say never
• Everything is reasonably • Focus on a single issue across
homogeneous a wide range of investments
• Still have to break between – Could be a strategic direction
sustainment and project – Could be a compliance issue
• For projects only: • Non-decisional
– Rack and stack – Cannot approve or reject
– Below the line: investment
• “Shovel ready” (UFR) – May be permitted to hamper
• Deferred or rejected progress if not addressed
• For steady state:
– Force direction with
performance goals an
benchmarks
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15. Things that bug project managers …
Needs to gain perspective Legitimate issues
• “Arbitrary” budgets and • Off-the-cuff promises,
completion dates are refusal to compromise $,
doomed to failure time or scope
• Demands for project • Micro-management of
status requires self- MS-Project detail while
incrimination losing focus on intent
• Interference in activities • Other projects / initiatives
below SDLC milestones are unreliable partners
• Post-mortems just beat a • Widespread issues are
dead horse known but never solved
• Raising red flags causes • Cannot get significant
embarrassment issues resolved
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16. Roundup
• Don’t let terminology get • Roles
in the way of success – Organizational governance
• Organizational change is establishes goals and sets
priorities
always hard
– Program management
– If program management provides the capacities that
and/or transparency are project managers will need
not part of the
– Project management gets
organizational culture, then
the work done
you are moving a lot of
cheese – Portfolio management
considers specific issues,
or selects from among
similar opportunities
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