Gower Handbook of Programme Management

Dennis Lock, Reinhard Wagner, Dennis Lock, Reinhard Wagner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317125136
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

In the ten years since this Gower Handbook was first published, Programme Management has been transformed to become the vehicle of choice for realising the objectives of large scale, complicated, business, government and social investment. The Second Edition of this Gower Handbook is a completely new text; designed as a definitive guide to the current state of Programme Management. To that end the text offers foundation theory and knowledge around key issues such as, managing programme contracts, people and know-how, complexity and uncertainty, benefits and success measures, as well as every stage of the programme life cycle. The main central section of the book provides theory, tools, advice and examples of practical application from an industry context and covers sectors including construction, energy, aerospace and defence, IT, automotive and the public sector. The Handbook also includes a section with chapters on assessing and improving programme competences and developing maturity. Discrete chapters relate programme management to the international baselines and standards. Collectively, the Gower Handbook of Programme Management is most comprehensive guide to the subject that you can buy.

Part I

Foundations of Programme Management

Chapter 1

Introduction to Programme Management

Reinhard Wagner and Dennis Lock

This chapter gives an outline description of programmes and programme management, includes some of the accepted definitions, predicts future trends and explains how the following chapters are arranged.

The roads we have travelled

Project management has been applied as a recognized discipline since the 1950s but the increasing volume and complexity of project-based work (as well as the change aspects of multiple projects) require more than a simple project management methodology. Hence the emergence of programme management as a new approach in recent years.

History is full of examples that could be perceived as large projects (or even programmes). Familiar instances include the Pyramids of Giza, the Colosseum in Rome, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and many, many more. Those endeavours were organized in a systematic way, with many organizational and management characteristics similar to today’s project and programme management. Formal management organization structures owe their origins principally to the church and the military (Figure 1.1). But our ancestors did not have the technological advantages of communications, modern materials and design aids that we enjoy today, which makes those early achievements even more remarkable.

Figure 1.1 Organization chart of officers in a Chinese military battalion for bridge building (Ming Dynasty)

By kind permission of the Chinese Association of South Australia.

As long ago as 1697, Daniel Defoe wrote An Essay upon Projects, a stunning book about changing society through ‘projects’. Our current notion of ‘management’ did not exist at that time; thus a person doing projects was called ‘projector’. An honest projector ‘is he who, having by fair and plain principles of sense, honesty, and ingenuity brought any contrivance to a suitable perfection, makes out what he pretends to, picks nobody’s pocket, puts his project in execution, and contents himself with the real produce as the profit of his invention’ (Defoe, 1697). Defoe concluded, ‘for indeed the true definition of a project, according to modern acceptation, is, as is said before, a vast undertaking, too big to be managed, and therefore likely enough to come to nothing.’

Interestingly, Defoe claimed the seventeenth century to be a ‘projectized’ century. Nearly a hundred years before industrialization, the endeavours called ‘projects’ helped to shape society. It was simply about ‘getting things done’ and to ‘project’ ideas into reality. Peter Morris mentions another example of that time, the founding Fellow of the British Royal Society, Sir Christopher Wren, who changed the traditional approach to building: ‘The huge amount of materials and personnel necessary called for careful management of the work and control of costs. The beginnings of modern construction management can be seen in the way Wren’s office was organized. The complementary roles of architect, engineer, surveyor and contractor emerged’ (Morris, 2013, p. 15).

The focus of projects changed after the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1760s. It was mainly industrialization that shaped societies in Europe, and the need for efficient usage of resources for the manufacturing processes. Projects were performed in the context of technological and economic progress to turn small-scale workshops into large-scale manufacturing facilities that could produce the machine tools and other machinery needed to equip steam-powered factories. On the one hand, the division of labour helped to gain efficiency, but on the other hand it required better coordination or integration of the activities performed.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the emergence of the first management scientists. Some of their stories are summarized in Chapter 31 of Lock and Scott (2013). Frederick Winslow Taylor and his colleagues tried to improve productivity by analysing and synthesizing workflows in a process that became known as ‘Taylorism’. Their objective was to improve efficiency, especially labour productivity, and to apply scientific insights to the design of processes and to management (Kanigel, 1997).

The disciplines of project and programme management emerged during the early 1950s in the USA. The aerospace and defence sectors were called upon to perform large and complex undertakings, such as the development of missiles and (later) the Apollo programme. The US Airforce and Department of Defense (DoD) wanted to manage those endeavours in the best way. Both organizations were influenced by operations research (OR) as the predominant contemporary management science (applying advanced analytical methods to help people make better decisions). That began the widespread use of critical path network planning with techniques such as the ‘Programme Evaluation and Review Technique’ (PERT) and several others. Interestingly, during this period the words ‘project’ and ‘programme’ were used interchangeably in this sector.

At that time the first manuals on programme management were developed, such as the DoD manual on ‘Systems Programme Management’. Support units emerged in the organizations, with names such as ‘Special Projects Office’ (SPO), which we would now call Programme or Programme Management Offices (Morris, 2013, p. 33). This sector was also influential in developing the methodology for programme scheduling (NASA, 2011) and is currently developing international standards for the planning and control of large and complex programmes (see the next chapter of this Handbook).

Starting from the early 1960s, other industries followed the approach of the aerospace and defence sector. These included, for example, the nuclear industry, construction, process industry and more recently the telecommunication and information technology (IT) sectors. One of us (DL) was involved in complex network-based multiproject scheduling of resources and costs for the special heavy machine tool industry in the late 1960s. However, none of these ‘latecomers’ was as influential in developing the methodologies as the aerospace and defence industries.

The first professional associations in the fields of project, programme and portfolio management were founded during the 1960s. In 1965, the International Project Management Association (IPMA) started in Europe; 1969 saw the foundation of the Project Management Institute (PMI) in the USA; the Association for Project Management (APM) dates from 1972. All started to formalize the expertise in project and programme management. They published either a Body of Knowledge (APM) or a Competence Baseline (IPMA) covering project and programme management.

These standards proliferated into many sectors and organizations, which adopted and applied the contained expertise. Industry experts helped to spread the word by becoming university lecturers. Now many academic institutions offer training programmes or even masters degree courses in project or programme management (such as Oxford University’s MSc in Major Programme Management). Professional associations and/or their accredited partners offer qualification and certification schemes in programme management. Even large organizations provide specific training for their employees involved in programmes and programme management. Now the practice of programme management is widespread.

Different types of programmes require their own specific approaches. The roles of people involved in (or affected) by programmes are increasingly recognized and that influences the way in which programmes are managed. For example, the engagement of stakeholders, leadership aspects and the management of change are influencing programme management beyond the very basic planning and control approaches of the early days.

The roads we shall follow in the future

What are the emerging trends for programme management? A survey by the Technical University Berlin together with the German Project Management Association (GPM) reveals interesting details (Gemünden and Schoper, 2014). Four trends will be highlighted here:

•projectification;

•coping with complexity;

•professionalization;

•project-orientated organization.

Projectification is about the significantly increasing number of projects throughout our societies. Projects occur in all sectors and types of organizations, including (but not limited to) industry, public administration, leisure activities and schools. The sheer number of projects requires coordination (in the form of programme, portfolio or multiproject management). It also raises awareness of the competencies needed for the professional conduct of those projects and the involvement of all sorts of stakeholders (such as top management for taking decisions). Because of the interrelations between projects, coordination is needed at a higher level to manage the projects in an integrated manner. That will call for more programme management in the future.

Complexity is a perception that we all have today. The complexity of projects and programmes is increasing significantly. Certainly, information technology is a main driver for this complexity. We are able to retrieve large amounts of data (‘big data’) via laptop computers and share that with our colleagues (who can be in remote places). People from various cultural backgrounds collaborate. Team dynamics and conflicts are perceived as complexities that project or programme managers need to deal with. Complex systems require programme managers to manage such endeavours from a systems viewpoint, understanding the interdependencies and system dynamics from a programme and/or systems manager perspective. Context factors, like market dynamics, a changing political situation, the environment, societal dynamics and other factors can impose additional ‘stress’ on the situation. It is clear that all these ...