As you collect the work, especially if you have many projects, think about how to organize the projects.
Are some of the programs from several subprojects? Do some programs have phased releases? Do some products need to be separated into smaller salable or releasable products?
A program is a collection of projects that all together deliver significant value. Each project may have some value by itself. But the real value is the collection of projects into one deliverable: a program. You might have a program of a number of subprojects all with one release date. Or, you might have a program of phased work, where each phase delivers some significant value.
Many of My Projects Are One Program by Pam, IT Project Manager
I was trying to manage about twenty-five projects. I was going nuts.
Then I realized we didn’t have a system unless all twenty-five projects were done. Our system was a program. Even though all my projects were subprojects, I could work with the business to define when the business side wanted to see which feature.
ORGANIZEYOURPROJECTS INTOPROGRAMSASNECESSARY 45
That meant I didn’t have to manage each project separately; I had a context for all of them. I could sequence them and still provide a status report for my managers. And, if they canceled the system, I didn’t have to keep managing all of those projects.
Now it made sense for me to make sure I had people assigned just to the subprojects we needed done now, not the ones that could wait.
Programs can take several shapes. Be ready to organize the projects into programs where several projects have one interdependent goal, whether that goal is one release, phases of releases, or several products.
3.3.1 Organize Projects into Programs
You might work in an organization that needs program management but doesn’t realize it. Here’s a simple test. Do you work in an organi- zation where Joe has one project, Sally has another, and Tim has a third but none of them can release their project until all of the projects are ready? If you have interdependencies between projects, you need program management.
Program management can take several forms, but a common form is the mechanism of organizing several interdependent projects together as one program so that the program manager and project managers can manage the interdependencies and successfully release the product.
Here Joe, Sally, and Tim all need to complete their projects so that the program can release at one time:
Product you want to sell to customers
Joe s project Sally s project im s project
If you’re a project manager, your management may not realize they’ve created a program when they initiated Joe’s, Sally’s, and Tim’s projects.
As you collect the work, talk with Joe, Sally, and Tim to see whether they should be working as a program team. If so, it’s time to help your colleagues realize the program is one entry in the portfolio, not three entries as separate projects. If you’re a middle or senior manager, assign a program manager to bring interdependent projects together.
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3.3.2 Organizing Projects into a Phased Program
Another form of a program is a phased series of projects for one prod- uct. Sometimes, Joe, Sally, and Tom are working on “independent”
projects because they are phased development. That is, Joe’s project is responsible for a feature set. Sally and Tom are working on “indepen- dent” feature sets—independent as far as what the customer sees. This looks complex, because itis complex. It’s also much harder to manage a phased program and to make portfolio decisions about it.
Product you want to sell to customers,
Release n
Joeʼs project
Sallyʼs project
Timʼs project Product you want to
sell to customers, Release n+1
Product you want to sell to customers,
Release n+2
Common code base
Time
If the projects access the same code base, the projects arenot indepen- dent. The work may be sufficiently long or challenging that you want the projects working at the same time. They are another kind of a pro- gram: a phased program where you have release 1, followed by release 2, followed by release 3, and so on. You might need to start working on follow-on releases (which your management thinks are projects) in order to complete them by a desired release date. But those projects are interdependent and need to be managed that way.
You especially want to avoid the situation that release 1 has been re- leased, the market changes, release 2’s goals are completely changed, but release 3 doesn’t change. If you manage the projects as a phased program, you will at least ask whether release 3’s goals should be changed—or even whether you should continue with this project (see Section4.1,Should We Do This Project at All?, on page51).
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Part of the problem with a phased program is that you want to under- stand how much planning went into these phases. In a number of agile environments, you might see five levels of planning:
• Product vision: A long-term guiding vision for the entire product created by the product owner and/or product manager.
• Product road map: A time-based view of high-level features that the product owner and product manager may want in the product.
• Release plan: For a given release, which of those features the prod- uct owner wants the team to deliver.
• Iteration plan: For a specific iteration, what the team commits to deliver.
• Daily commitment: For a specific day, what the team commits to do.
Phased programs occur when one team cannot—by themselves—deliver on the product road map via a release plan in the time the organization wants the features.
3.3.3 Creating One or Several Products
Imagine that you start and complete a project with a limited scope.
You add more scope over several releases and some time and realize that this one product actually should be several products.
Original product
Feature et 1 Feature et 2 Feature et 3 Feature et 4 Feature et 5
The problem is that you’re organized as a massive project or as a pro- gram. What can you do?
First, if you’re the first-level manager, create a picture of how all the pieces do something different and how they are connected—or not. If you’re a higher-level manager, ask the project or program manager to create this picture. This picture helps your peers and managers see when and how to make a decision about several projects or one product and how to organize it.
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You might decide to organize it like this:
Original product, as itʼs currently released
Feature set 1 Feature set 2 Feature set 3 Feature set 4 Feature set 4 Evolved product, as itʼs
currently released
More likely, you will need some phases to separate the products and to help the customers move.
As you collect the work, keep thinking about how the products or sys- tems work together.