Program and Strategic Life Cycles

 In the last post, we covered the use of the Return Map for a Project, throughout its Life Cycle.

Here, we will augment that with some diagrams for Program Planning.   We use something like this for a Business Plan, to manage a group of three to six projects of similar technology.

The notion here is that the tactical plan 'fits' all of the projects using these strategic choices.  But naturally, time reveals new information, and changes occur.   The next diagram shows how we manage those evolutions

Obviously, the successive Product Plans shown to the right are archived just as was the Project Plan shown in the previous Post.   The post-mortem learnings from studying these iterations later is invaluable

Finally, because a program has multiple threads, there is a concomitant investment strategy for the projgram, showing various specific outcomes, project by project.   This is an old "actual" set of data

The more important investment strategy to focus on, though, is the longer-term one of multiple successive programs, each with relatively new technologies, etc.  These, in today's terminology, are the disruptive successive waves that must be dealt with to stay abreast of dynamic competition.   Note that the stakes get higher with succeeding waves (making an assumption that the company has successfully mastered each round vis-a-vis competitors.  In my experience, many corporate management teams stumble on the third round--"can't we wait until we see if "4Y" is going to happen before we commit to "9X" investment in the third?"   Metaphorically, NOPE.   But many, even most, do.   

So, lots to think about with these two posts.  The intriguing point for me is that this quick succession of six graphs (and the concomitant aperiodic review adjustments) is essentially unknown in Technology Management programs at every college and university.  Their focus is on bullet point-by-bullet point lists for Project management only--dull, uninspired, almost never followed, and certainly not too useful.  To go beyond project management to program or multi-program strategic management is totally absent.

Sigh...  and we wonder why large corporations stall and wither.