What is a Practical Program Manager?

Anyone unfamiliar to the role of a program manager is instantly confronted with this question, and it's no surprise they end up at Microsoft's excellent overview.

Many have worked with program manager's and are very familiar with the role, so you can skip ahead to the question "What does a program manager wear in Jan 2006?". For the uninitiated, however, the first question you may have is "Isn't that a project manager?"

The answer is no. It's horrible first question, and it makes for a boring first answer:

Throughout many companies, the number of which I don't know (Does anybody have statistics for industry-adoption of the technical program management role?), it's still very common to not have program managers. In successful projects many of the tasks a program manager assumes are handled by various people on the team; From an idea's inception to fulfillment, the development managers, project manager, architects, business analysts, developers, and any other number of people collectively undertake the responsibility of seeing the project through and adopting the tasks a program manager does, such as specifications, evangelism, scheduling, and more.


For the more analytically astute, your first question may be "What is a Program?" The American Heritage definition contains:

to design a program for; schedule the activities of.

Encarta's closest applicable definition is

a plan of action for achieving something

. Fun!

As a technical program manager, your going to be managing requirements, specs, and many other duties which will vary from organization to organization.

Simple enough, so who reports to a Program Manager? As someone (?) once joked, All the responsibility, but none of the authority! In this article, Danan Davis suggests this is 100% true, but I disagree with him 100%. While you don't have any direct reports, you must have authority. You must be a source of reliable information, with obvious knowledge and experience, and respected qualities. Authority is obtained only by the combined perception of your organization. Managing that perception is a major requirement of a program manager's job; although you probably haven't seen it listed in a role description….but that's another article.

It's true, though, that while there has been movement in some organizations to have project managers report to program managers, typically only lead or group program managers have direct reports. And their reports are other program managers.

So, who do Program Managers report to? In some organizations, program managers report to a product manager. In others, a business analyst. In other organizations program managers report (through a chain of command) to a technology officer. There seems to be growing trend in tech companies these days to less of a subject-matter expert organization chart to a more generic resource-pooled org chart, but once again that's another article.

Are you practical?

Enough about Program Manager's, what is a Practical Program Manager? I think the name for this site is best understood by the Encarta definition of practical:

1. Concerned with matters of fact
a. Concerned with actual facts and experience, not theory
2. Useful - Sensible or useful, and likely to be effective
3. Good at solving problems
a. Good at managing matters and dealing with problems and difficulties
4. Practicing - involved in the actual work of a profession or activity
a. Involved in the actual work or profession or activity.
5. Suitable for everyday use - plain, functional, and suitable for everyday use
a. Plain, functional, and suitable for every day use
6. Virtual
a. Resembling a particular thing in almost every way.

I believe those are fundamental and that the success of a Program Manager is proportional to how well he or she applies those facts. I'm sure that's true with any profession or undertaking. I do however, believe that some theory is needed in order to understand the long visions and goals of an organization. As companies constantly change, evolve and innovate, some speculation will undoubtedly be based on theory.

So, what does a Practical Program Manager wear in Jan 2006?

Something practical.


(I can submit this story to fashion magazines, now!)

Related resources:

Joal Spolsky has some history of the program manager title.

Chris Pratley's What is a program manager?

IBM has an excellent article on program management vs. project management in their rational series from developerworks.
Dave Massy: What is a program manager?
Mike deem's somewhat satirical description.

Microsoft's description.

Jobsblog has an article on PMs@Microsoft.