Program Managers from POME by Gautam Koppala

Program Managers

Managing complex programs represents a challenge requiring skills in team building, leadership, conflict resolution, technical expertise, planning, organization, entrepreneurship, administration, management support, and the allocation of resources. POME examines these skills relative to program management effectiveness. A key factor to good program performance is the program manager's ability to integrate personnel from many disciplines into an effective work team.

The program level of an organisation has as much responsibility for the success of a project as the project manager. If a program manager is also a project sponsor and has given approval for a project to begin, then support throughout the life of that project will be essential. Without such support it is unlikely that a project will succeed.

Program manager

Function

Responsibility

Implications if not met

Scope

Ensure the project objectives meet business needs

Project becomes irrelevant

Time

Monitor the project's progress

Incomplete business solutions,

overruns schedule

Cost

Provide prudent financial direction

Exceed budget

Quality

Monitor the project's outputs, provide quality assurance

Rework

HR

Provide leadership, allocate staff

Disorganisation and inefficiency

Communications

Communicate the project outcomes and status to the

Project lacks support

business level or client

Risk

Consider business risks as well as project risks

Poor issues and change management

Contracts

Monitor adherence to scope,

Incomplete deliverables, legal

ensure legal issues are resolved

disputes

Integration

Linking the project to the business outcome through benefits management

Lack of corporate support

To get results, the program manager must relate to

(1) The people to be managed,

(2) The task to be done,

(3) The tools available,

(4) The organizational structure

(5) The organizational environment, including the customer community,

(6) The collection of revenue of the operations,

(7) Unbilled follow up

(8) Managing escalations of the diversified projects

(9) Working Capital of the his group of Projects

(10) Collection Plan of the his group of Projects

(11) Contractual Obligations

(12) Compliance and Legal issues

(13) Others, which are pertaining to the Projects in the eagle eye view.

With an understanding of the interaction of corporate organization and behavior elements, the manager can build an environment conducive to the working team's needs. The internal and external forces that impinge on the organization of the project must be reconciled to mutual goals. Thus the program manager must be both socially and technically aware to understand how the organization functions and how these functions will affect the program organization of the particular job to be done. In addition, the program manager must understand the culture and value system of the organization he is working with. Effective program management is directly related to proficiency in these ten skills:

• Team building
• Leadership
• Conflict resolution
• Technical expertise
• Planning
• Organization
• Entrepreneurship
• Administration
• Management support( Finance, Contracts, Supply Chain, Logistics, Sales, Facilities)
• Resource allocation

It is important that the personal management style underlying these skills facilitate the integration of multidisciplinary program resources for synergistic operation. The days of the manager who gets by with technical expertise alone or pure administrative skills are gone.

Team-Building Skills

Building the program team is one of the prime responsibilities of the program manager. Team building involves a whole spectrum of management skills required to identify, commit, and integrate the various task groups from the traditional functional organization into a single program management system.

To be effective, the program manager must provide an atmosphere conducive to teamwork. He must nurture a climate with the following characteristics:

• Team members committed to the program
• Good interpersonal relations and team spirit
• The necessary expertise and resources
• Clearly defined goals and program objectives
• Involved and supportive top management
• Good program leadership
• Open communication among team members and support organizations
• A low degree of detrimental interpersonal and intergroup conflict

Three major considerations are involved in all of the above factors: (1) effective communications, (2) sincere interest in the professional growth of team members, and (3) commitment to the project.

Leadership Skills

A prerequisite for program success is the program manager's ability to lead the team within a relatively unstructured environment. It involves dealing effectively with managers and supporting personnel across functional lines and the ability to collect and filter relevant data for decision-making in a dynamic environment. It involves the ability to integrate individual demands, requirements, and limitations into decisions and to resolve intergroup conflicts.

As with a general manager, quality leadership depends heavily on the program manager's personal experience and credibility within the organization. An effective management style might be characterized this way:

• Clear project leadership and direction
• Assistance in problem-solving
• Facilitating the integration of new members into the team
• Ability to handle interpersonal conflict
• Facilitating group decisions
• Capability to plan and elicit commitments
• Ability to communicate clearly
• Presentation of the team to higher management
• Ability to balance technical solutions against economic and human factors

The personal traits desirable and supportive of the above skills are:

• Project management experience
• Flexibility and change orientation
• Innovative thinking
• Initiative and enthusiasm
• Charisma and persuasiveness
• Organization and discipline

Conflict Resolution Skills

Conflict is fundamental to complex task management. Understanding the determinants of conflicts is important to the program manager's ability to deal with conflicts effectively. When conflict becomes dysfunctional, it often results in poor program decision-making, lengthy delays over issues, and a disruption of the team's efforts, all negative influences to program performance. However, conflict can be beneficial when it produces involvement and new information and enhances the competitive spirit.

To successfully resolve conflict and improve overall program performance, program managers must:

• Understand interaction of the organizational and behavioral elements in order to build an environment conducive to their team's motivational needs. This will enhance active participation and minimize unproductive conflict.
• Communicate effectively with all organizational levels regarding both project objectives and decisions. Regularly scheduled status review meetings can be an important communication vehicle.
• Recognize the determinants of conflict and their timing in the project life cycle. Effective project planning, contingency planning, securing of commitments, and involving top management can help to avoid or minimize many conflicts before they impede project performance.

The accomplished manager needs a "sixth sense" to indicate when conflict is desirable, what kind of conflict will be useful, and how much conflict is optimal for a given situation. In the final analysis, he has the sole responsibility for his program and how conflict will contribute to its success or failure.

Technical Skills

The program manager rarely has all the technical, administrative, and marketing expertise needed to direct the program single-handedly. It is essential, however, for the program manager to understand the technology, the markets, and the environment of the business. Without this understanding, the consequences of local decisions on the total program, the potential growth ramifications, and relationships to other business opportunities cannot be foreseen by the manager. Further technical expertise is necessary to evaluate technical concepts and solutions, to communicate effectively in technical terms with the project team, and to assess risks and make trade-offs between cost, schedule, and technical issues. This is why in complex problem-solving situations so many project managers must have an engineering background.

Technical expertise is composed of an understanding of the:

• Technology involved
• Engineering tools and techniques employed
• Specific markets, their customers, and requirements
• Product applications
• Technological trends and evolutions
• Relationship among supporting technologies
• People who are part of the technical community

The technical expertise required for effective management of engineering programs is normally developed through progressive growth in engineering or supportive project assignments in a specific technology area. Frequently, the project begins with an exploratory phase leading into a proposal. This is normally an excellent testing ground for the future program manager. It also allows top management to judge the new candidate's capacity for managing the technological innovations and integration of solutions.

Planning Skills

Planning skills are helpful for any undertaking; they are absolutely essential for the successful management of large complex programs. The project plan is the road map that defines how to get from the start to the final results.

Program planning is an ongoing activity at all organizational levels. However, the preparation of a project summary plan, prior to project start, is the responsibility of the program manager. Effective project planning requires particular skills far beyond writing a document with schedules and budgets. It requires communication and information processing skills to define the actual resource requirements and administrative support necessary. It requires the ability to negotiate the necessary resources and commitments from key personnel in various support organizations with little or no formal authority.

Effective planning requires skills in the areas of:

• Information processing
• Communication
• Resource negotiations
• Securing commitments
• Incremental and modular planning
• Assuring measurable milestones
• Facilitating top management involvement

In addition, the program manager must assure that the plan remains a viable document. Changes in project scope and depth are inevitable. The plan should reflect necessary changes through formal revisions and should be the guiding document throughout the life cycle of the program. An obsolete or irrelevant plan is useless.

Finally, program managers need to be aware that planning can be overdone. If not controlled, planning can become an end in itself and a poor substitute for innovative work. It is the responsibility of the program manager to build flexibility into the plan and police it against misuse.

Organizational Skills

The program manager must be a social architect; that is, he must understand how the organization works and how to work with the organization. Organizational skills are particularly important during project formation and startup when the program manager is integrating people from many different disciplines into an effective work team. It requires defining the reporting relationships, responsibilities, lines of control, and information needs. A good program plan and a task matrix are useful organizational tools. In addition, the organizational effort is facilitated by clearly defined program objectives, open communication channels, good program leadership, and senior management support.

Entrepreneurial Skills

The program manager also needs a general management perspective. For example, economic considerations affect the organization's financial performance, but objectives often are much broader than profits. Customer satisfaction, future growth, cultivation of related market activities, and minimum organizational disruptions of other programs might be equally important goals. The effective program manager is concerned with all these issues.

Entrepreneurial skills are developed through actual experience. However, formal MBA-type training, special seminars, and cross-functional training programs can help to develop the entrepreneurial skills needed by program managers.

Administrative Skills

Administrative skills are essential. The program manager must be experienced in planning, staffing, budgeting, scheduling, and other control techniques. In dealing with technical personnel, the problem is seldom to make people understand administrative techniques such as budgeting and scheduling, but to impress on them that costs and schedules are just as important as elegant technical solutions.

Particularly on larger programs, managers rarely have all the administrative skills required. While it is important that program managers understand the company's operating procedures and available tools, it is often necessary for the program manager to free himself from administrative details regardless of his ability to handle them. He has to delegate considerable administrative tasks to support groups or hire a project administrator.

Some helpful tools for the manager in the administration of his program include: (1) the meeting, (2) the report, (3) the review, and (4) budget and schedule controls. Program managers must be thoroughly familiar with these available tools and know how to use them effectively.

Management Support Building Skills

The program manager is surrounded by a myriad of organizations that either support him or control his activities. An understanding of these interfaces is important to program managers as it enhances their ability to build favorable relationships with senior management. Project organizations are shared-power systems with personnel of many diverse interests and "ways of doing things." Only a strong leader backed by senior management can prevent the development of unfavorable biases.

Four key variables influence the project manager's ability to create favorable relationships with senior management: (1) his ongoing credibility, (2) the visibility of his program, (3) the priority of his program relative to other organizational undertakings, and (4) his own accessibility.

Resource Allocation Skills

A program organization has many bosses. Functional lines often shield support organizations from direct financial control by the project office. Once a task has been authorized, it is often impossible to control the personnel assignments, priorities, and indirect manpower costs. In addition, profit accountability is difficult owing to the interdependencies of various support departments and the often changing work scope and contents.

Effective and detailed program planning may facilitate commitment and reinforce control. Part of the plan is the "Statement of Work, " which establishes a basis for resource allocation. It is also important to work out specific agreements with all key contributors and their superiors on the tasks to be performed and the associated budgets and schedules. Measurable milestones are not only important for hardware components, but also for the "invisible" program components such as systems and software tasks. Ideally, these commitments on specs, schedules, and budgets should be established through involvement by key personnel in the early phases of project formation, such as the proposal phase. This is the time when requirements are still flexible, and trade-offs among performance, schedule, and budget parameters are possible. Further, this is normally the time when the competitive spirit among potential contributors is highest, often leading to a more cohesive and challenging work plan.

POME Case Study:

The Staffing Side of Your Job - Case Problem: ‘‘The Rough Rider''

Overview

‘‘I can't believe my ears!'' exclaimed Alice, a candidate for the machine operator's position. ‘‘I've heard of men like you but didn't believe they existed. Where do you come off asking me personal questions like that?''

‘‘Just cool your jets, Judy, '' replied Raymond, the production manager. ‘‘I was just making small talk and wanted. . . .''

‘‘I'm not a Judy!'' asserted Alice, cutting off Raymond abruptly. ‘‘My name is Mrs. Hernandez. And how dare you ask me where I was born, what church I belong to, and how many children I plan to have!''

‘‘Look, '' said Raymond, ‘‘you people cause trouble wherever you go! Just get out of my office; there's no way you're gonna work for this company!''

After Alice had left, Raymond walked toward the snack area.

‘‘Sure, '' he thought, ‘‘her resume looked fine, but what a nasty personality! I'm glad I found that out before hiring the broad.''

Arriving at the snack area, Raymond was greeted by his boss, Chuck, the superintendent.

‘‘Raymond, '' said Chuck, ‘‘I think we'd better talk about a problem that's come up. Let's go into my office.''

Once in the office, Chuck explained the situation.

‘‘This is an official complaint, '' Chuck said as he pointed to some papers on his desk. ‘‘According to Larry Jones, one of your operators, you treated him unfairly: You sent him home after only one verbal warning about his work.''

‘‘So what's wrong with that?'' asked Raymond. ‘‘I'm his boss and I have that right.''

‘‘Yes, you are a production manager, '' said Chuck, ‘‘but Larry says that you usually give anyone else with the same problem three or four warnings, including written warnings, before taking such an action. In other words, Larry is claiming unfair treatment by you.''

‘‘That guy has some nerve to send this complaint to you, going over my head and behind my back, '' said Raymond angrily. ‘‘I told him my decision was final.''

‘‘That's another thing I wanted to mention to you, '' said Chuck. ‘‘When Larry gave me this complaint, he was extremely upset, claiming that you threatened him with serious repercussions should this matter go any farther. Did you?''

‘‘Not really, '' responded Raymond, with embarrassment. ‘‘I may have been a little rough on the guy, but that was to set him straight as to who's production boss.''

‘‘Just as I thought, '' said Chuck. ‘‘We have a grievance procedure around here, and your job is to make sure that this procedure is used when problems can't be handled between you and your operators.

‘‘You not only failed to inform Larry about this procedure, which is his right as an employee, but you also insinuated that reprisals would be taken if he made further efforts to resolve what he believed to be unfair treatment.''

While Chuck was showing Raymond the written grievance procedure in the human resources policies manual, Randy and Josh, two other machine operators, were quietly commiserating behind closed doors.

‘‘Two years ago, '' Randy confided in Josh, ‘‘I was sure I would be filling the senior operator's vacancy that had just opened up with the retirement of one of the old-timers. But to my surprise, Raymond went ahead on his own and hired some guy from the outside. I had the qualifications, had been with the company several years, and was mad as heck!''

‘‘Well, I would be, too, '' responded Josh. ‘‘Isn't there a ‘promote-from-within' policy here?''

‘‘You bet, '' said Randy. ‘‘Right in the employee handbook. I took the matter to Chuck's office and contested the outside hiring. I even brought Simpson, the human resources director, into the dispute.''

‘‘What happened, did you win?'' inquired Josh.

‘‘I'm here, aren't I?'' Randy stated proudly. ‘‘And I'm a senior operator. They fired that outsider just as fast as you can blink an eye and gave me the position, along with an apology from management.''

After returning from a luncheon meeting, Raymond was relaxing at his desk when Paul Simpson, the human resources director, asked to come in and discuss an important matter.

‘‘Raymond, we've got trouble, '' said Paul. ‘‘I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but I just had a phone conversation with an attorney representing a Mrs. Alice Hernandez. He said she intends to file a lawsuit against you and the company because of unlawful and discriminatory practices against her by you in a job interview. Do you know what I'm talking about?''

‘‘You and your dumb personnel rules, Simpson, '' retorted Raymond. ‘‘You're always on my back about this and that. The fact is that broad was crazy just like all those people!''

‘‘I'm not here to defend myself, and I'm certainly not here to attack you at this time, '' asserted the human resources director. ‘‘Get this straight . . . we're in big trouble because of your actions with that job candidate and we had better sit down and start planning how to deal with this problem. And I'm telling you right now, Raymond, if we get through this one alive, you had better straighten up and start working with me, rather than against me.''

Case Analysis

Raymond, a production manager, has a knack for getting in trouble while performing his staffing duties. He bungles interviewing, fair staff treatment, promoting and grievance procedures as well as his relationship with the human resources department.

During the selection interview with Alice Hernandez, Raymond wrongly attempted to engage in discussion of the candidate's personal background. Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) guidelines clearly prohibit discussion of such matters as place of birth (national origin), religion, and family planning.

Raymond's ignorance-or perhaps rejection-of the EEO laws was strongly compounded by his overt bigotry toward females and/or Hispanics. In addition, his inept handling of the interview with Hernandez created serious legal complications.

The meeting between Raymond and his manager, Chuck, reveals Raymond's total disregard for the company's grievance procedure, which is clearly established in the company's human resources policies manual. Of great concern to Chuck was Raymond's refusal to let Larry, the subordinate, take his issue of unfair treatment any further as well as Raymond's threat of reprisals should Larry do this.

The entire philosophy of any grievance policy assumes that, on occasion, differences of opinion between employees and supervisors could arise that would require satisfactory resolution by other parties. Such a policy serves the best interests of employees as well as management by providing a clear means of problem-solving while protecting the chain of command concept.

The case of Josh, the new operator, presents additional indications of Raymond's inability to handle his staffing responsibilities. When hiring Josh, for example, Raymond failed to accurately describe the job Josh would be doing. The job description-had Raymond used one-would have been the perfect tool to help clarify Josh's job and prevent such a misunderstanding or misrepresentation.

In Randy's case, Raymond displayed a gross disregard for the published company policy of ‘‘promote from within'' and rejected the human resources department as an important group to help in the recruitment and selection process. Had Raymond simply mentioned his need to fill the senior operator's vacant position to the human resources director, he would have been reminded of the ‘‘promote-from-within'' policy.

A working relationship with human resources and an appreciation for its support services and professional staffing advice might have prevented not only the dispute over Raymond's wrongful hiring from outside but many of the staffing problems that he displayed in this case.

Solution:

To effectively handle the staffing side of your job, consider the following action tools:

• Commit to excellence in staffing, recognizing that within your department, you may be accountable for everything from recruiting, selecting, hiring, orienting, placing, training, evaluating, promoting, disciplining, and compensating to the suspension or discharge of employees.
• Obtain and maintain a current issue of the company's human resources policies manual as well as the employee handbook. Use your manual as a working guide to help ensure that daily staffing decisions made within your department are within human resources and legal guidelines.
• Get to know the human resources professionals that support your department. These individuals possess special expertise to help you solve day-to-day people problems. They may also be able to provide you with specialized staffing services, such as recruiting and screening.
• Be fair in handling performance problems with employees and implementing the company's system of progressive discipline, moving from oral to written warnings to suspension and discharge.

Gautam Koppala,

POME Author

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GAUTAM KOPPALA, With over a decade, track record of successful leadership, excellent results through strategic skills in driving revenue and profit growth. Demonstrated ability to identify and trouble shoot critical issues impacting productivity, cost, distribution, marketing, Strategic positioning, sales and financial operations, with innate ability to build and maintain strong client relationships in operations. Expert in distilling and managing processes, enhancing internal structures, and promoting multi-skilled team competencies via nurturing mentorship and inspirational leadership. Engagements have spanned operational, strategic, technological and change management roles. Academically, I am a cum laude graduate with a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (B-Tech E.E.E.) and a post graduate in Masters in Human Resources Management (M.H.R.M.) and Masters of Foreign Trade (M.F.T.). As you will see my Post Graduation's were been studied part-time, as well as working full-time as an Engineer. I feel that this demonstrates my ability to maintain dedication, motivation and enthusiasm for a project management over a long period of time. In addition, balancing full-time work with study has perfected my time-management and organizational skills. I believe that my college degrees and gamut certifications in combination with my extensive broad-based work experience along with my drive, resourcefulness and determination, would make me an excellent candidate for a senior management position with any company. Highlights of my background include Operations related Commercial, Supply chain, Sales with a magnificent experience in Project management, technically oriented towards Automation and Security Systems in Industrial and Building sectors. Presently, writing a book on Projects and Operations Management (comprise of 12 volumes, 6K pages), and awaited for the reputed publications. These books can be checked in Google books and other search engines too.

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