A Program Manager's Challenges

WHO are you?

You are a Program Manager that is responsible for coordinating and managing a number (tens, hundreds, maybe thousands) of projects or events, that each need to be executed consistent with a program-specific set of process steps in order to produce a consistent set of deliverables.

WHAT keeps you up at night?

Knowing that you are depending on your people, using their spreadsheets and paper-based processes to be consistent in their definition the detailed work. Then, a new set of spreadsheets are used by your Supply Chain team to procure and create contracts. And then, your execution teams use spreadsheets to get progress and incurred cost information, often days or weeks after you have any chance of correcting a course of action. And you have to be ready to communicate the update story to your management tomorrow.

HOW are you dealing with this now?

You have hired extra people to do the needed clerical work of timekeeping, schedule-tending and phone-based communication to get the progress information. You receive and distribute spreadsheets to meeting attendees, and attend meetings to update people who could have been updated quicker via work-flow driven notifications.

WHY are you not using newer technology to avoid this tedium?

Company rules allow you to do whatever you want to do in your spreadsheets. But barriers are built to prevent mirroring these spreadsheets in an easily available, inexpensive, transparent, cloud-based work management and work flow-driven solution.

WHEN will this situation change?

When the pain (i.e cost) of the labyrinthine manual processes is felt by the loss control teams (i.e. management). Hopefully, until then you are able to avoid: a. the safety, health and environmental events despite these inefficient processes; and b. the adverse quality impacts are inevitable with a manually managed workflow. It changes when you digitalize your manual processes and help your team succeed 100% of the time, based on collaboration.

WHERE will the benefits be felt?

With a digitally enabled set of work processes, the benefits would be felt on the shop floor or work face, and on each level of hierarchy all the way to the top floor or corporate office. From multiple locations at one site, to multiple sites in a company or agency. The work scope, the audit trail, the progress, the costs, the schedule, the procurement strategy - are all in one place to simplify all needs of a program in all of the places that stakeholders, staff and crews work.