Program and project management

Deliver interdependent cloud initiatives in a flexible and coordinated manner.

Program and project management are critical functions for enterprises that are adopting the cloud. Complex cross-functional cloud transformation initiatives require careful coordination, especially in more traditionally structured organizations. Program management is especially critical since many of these inter-dependencies may only become obvious during delivery.

The evolution of program and project management should be approached iteratively to address the organizational and process changes required through the transformation. Program managers should elevate their role to oversee cross-functional initiatives. They need to develop processes to manage inter-dependencies identified during delivery, as well as processes for feature requests and backlog management. Program managers should oversee centralized tooling development that enables project and product teams to deliver with reusable assets. Project managers should change their focus based on the new processes to iteratively deliver features.

Start

The program management function should work with portfolio management and the transformation office to prioritize and plan the migration of applications to the cloud. Effective cloud transformations requires new areas of expertise that project managers may need to develop, such as vendor management, security, legal, operations, and risk management in the cloud. To gain success, organizations should focus on the following key elements of program and project management.

• Project Management Office (PMO) — The PMO leads organizational-level efforts that require cross-functional management. For example, the PMO promotes new cloud standards and tools for project management. It also sets up communities of practice and training for project managers and other roles involved in the delivery of cloud initiatives.

  • The PMO leads the education of supporting organizations, such as finance, to identify how cloud adoption will affect budgets while moving from project to product funding.

  • The PMO begins to evolve by elevating program managers to oversee these efforts, define new processes, and develop experienced technologists with project management (PM) skills to successfully deliver cloud initiatives.

• Establish cloud specific governance reviews — The goal of cloud governance is to enhance data security, manage risk, and enable the smooth operation of cloud systems. It is important for organizations to review their existing governance processes and update them as required.

  • To improve the efficiency and agility, organizations need to review the frequency of any governance reviews and bring them in alignment with their iterative schedule. To achieve their broader business goal, organizations need to establish new agile collaboration among interdependent teams, including architecture, infrastructure, security, finance, and operations.

  • To effectively manage change, it is important to identify and train dedicated project management resources. Organizations can benefit by investing efforts to develop project management skills in the domains of agile, vendor management, security, and risk in the cloud to effectively manage complex digital transformation programs.

• Iterate rapidly, stay agile — If not already in place, secure management commitment to move from large waterfall projects to an agile (iterative and incremental) approach.

  • Adopt an agile approach to migrating to the cloud, allowing teams to learn from experience and adapt throughout the transformation journey.

  • Create an empowered team with decision making authority, secure business and technology commitments, create well-prioritized backlogs, and structure work in the form of epics and stories.

  • Develop a roadmap and initial plans, and adopt agile planning methods.

  • Create product vision and roadmap, as well as release, iteration, and daily plans.

Advance

The use of technology to manage projects is expanding as a result of digitization and cloud adoption. Project teams must be cross-functional in order to achieve their project and business goals. Transforming to an agile project organization represents an opportunity to react quickly to new requirements through iterative delivery. Prioritization of business and technology collaboration is essential for faster delivery of a greater number of features compared to traditional waterfall approaches.

• Enable Business Transformation Office (BTO) — Organizations that successfully transform generally have a Business Transformation Office (BTO). An effective BTO looks across all business functions within the CEO’s authority and actively unblocks projects through regular, action-oriented, fast-paced meetings.

  • A technology-centric PMO often has no ability to address business transformation and hence morphs into a center of excellence for the project teams to live agile values and to secure the teams' decision-making autonomy.

  • The existing PMO can support majority of the project managers to transition to agile based roles and convey the new agile principles and requirements to the teams with the help of training and continuous skillset development.

• Project teams to standing agile teams — Project teams are usually time-limited teams formed to complete a particular task. When the team completes its task, it disbands. Transition to standing teams based on business products and supporting applications. These teams require multi-stack developers, knowledge of DevOps, and ability to quickly push incremental changes into production to deliver value. Project management changes from rigid processes and structures to flexible processes and self-responsibility.

• Enable automation and create value-driven organization — Increase automation of testing, implement continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) and DevSecOps. Create automated portfolio dashboards. Shift from triple constraints of cost, schedule, and quality, to value creation for end user. Enable iterative tracking of realized benefits.

Excel

The role of project and program management is evolving to move lower in the organization and is no longer operating across multiple areas of the organization. Most of the organization moves to autonomous teams that have minimal dependencies through cloud native applications that are API driven.

• Shift from a project-focused to a product-focused organization — Move from project-focused teams to long-lived application or product focused agile teams, adjusting to the fast-paced and customer feedback-oriented world of agile and DevOps.

  • Feature delivery completes the transition from formal projects to iterative delivery managed by the product teams.

  • Budget management transitions from annual project funding to product funding.

  • Teams are stable and work is brought to the teams by product owners through a well-defined, prioritized backlog.

• Encourage experimentation to drive innovation — Product teams are knowledgeable about business process and are customer obsessed. They have well-established prioritization criteria and are experimenting in a surrounding that fosters creativity. Product teams have a Minimum Loveable Product (MLP) mindset in terms of making fast changes through real-time and frequent input from end users.