Good to Great - Program Management in CA PPM
One can create Programs in Clarity and associate sub projects - the plumbing in the system is there - the technical aspect of setup exists - this is good. What will make Programs Great is building out the functional pieces to support the day-in/day-out needs of Program Managers. They don't see Clarity as a tool that they 'do their job in' today.
A great place to start is with the existing, documented needs & Ideas.
Here are a couple User Stories of needs we've had that, while *technically* the clarity datamodel supports, we’re missing the ‘business user interface’ that makes this valuable to users.
Program to Project Dependencies
- As a Program Manager, I need to easily create Major Program Milestones on my Program and be able to associate these milestones with milestones or tasks on the Program's Projects.
- As Program and Project Managers we need '360 degree' communication and visibility on these dependencies and the progress of all the moving parts towards the milestones.
- As Program and Project Managers, any date change on Program Milestones needs to be easily visible to the Project Managers. Any Projects in danger of meeting dependency timetables or costs need to be easily visible as early as possible.
Program to Project Costs
- As a Program Manager I need to easily monitor Program and Project Costs. I need to be able to set control limits and reporting periods/gates that allow me to best monitor and control overall Program costs and take action as necessary.
Program and Project Issues, Risks and Changes
IRCRs on Projects in a Program are best managed *intra* Project - tools used to aid the project's success. Program level IRCRs are concerned with the larger business & environmental concerns of the Program and the interrelationships of the Projects. This leads to a two tiered monitoring & controlling need for Program Managers.
- As a Program Manager, I need to be able to separate, combine, slice & dice Program level and Project level Issues, Risks and Changes for my monitoring, controlling and communication needs.
On a recent Program we created tools to accomplish much of the above in Clarity via Workbench Views, Portlets and Reports - again - the data model *can*. This failed to launch because the collection of tools was just not easy and intuitive enough for the busy Program Managers.
We need to take a "Business User In" approach to easing and enhancing the user experience at getting the most of Programs.