Programme Delivery Framework
In today’s digital world, where initiatives and business outcomes must be delivered quickly, organisations must manage multiple projects concurrently often with shared resources, working remotely. Today’s traditional project management methodologies and techniques do not recognise the reality of organisational structures and workplace priorities, nor do they leverage the potential benefits that accrue from multi-skilled and multi-location teams.
Therefore, Programme Management is key, and NWT also believes that a Programme Delivery framework is required to support the Programme Management disciplines and to ensure that an organisation can run the multitude of related projects.
Programme Management as a discipline will focus on ensuring that the projects are delivered in line with the Business results, Benefits and Objectives that are aligned with the organisation’s vision and Business Strategy. It is the way that will control project management across the different projects and ensure that a group of related projects, managed as a programme, deliver to schedule, at the right level of quality and achieve the desire business outcomes. It is also a way of preventing projects from focussing on the technical delivery at the expense of the business outcomes. Programme Management is not concerned with the day to day running of individual projects, this is the responsibility of the project managers. This function needs to ensure that all projects are running on target and that each will achieve its overall contribution to the programme.
The activities undertaken during programme management are:
- Setting the baseline.
- Agreeing roles and responsibilities.
- Programme planning.
- Project prioritisation.
- Stakeholder communication.
- Progress reporting.
- Managing benefits.
- Quality management.
- Risk management.
- Issue management.
- Programme closure.
Programme Delivery is also responsible for directing and communicating the various strategies, process and tools that will be used on the programme. NWT advocates the implementation of a Programme Delivery framework which consists of a set of management tools used to design, monitor and evaluate interventions. Many of these will be determined by the Architecture Office or the Office of the CTO but their implementation and the adherence to the standards that have been set, are the responsibility of this framework.
NWT understands the importance of this work and provides a CTO as a Service to help organisations. The Programme Delivery framework also needs to understand the different phases of product/service delivery and must maintain a product/service or process through the delivery phases, into live and then into retirement. It needs to guide a team through the different phases of the delivery product life cycle and ensure the quality of the product/service.
There are many elements that contribute to Programme Delivery and a framework approach will provide consistency including:
- A focus on delivering major organisational change or benefits.
- Agreed frameworks and Methodologies to be used within the Programme.
- Agreed Tools and Processes to be used on the programme.
- Greater control through visibility of all projects in the programme.
- An understanding of project and programme dependencies.
- Clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
- A single line of communication to the steering committee or sponsor through the Digital PMO.
- Governance Model to support Programme and Operating Model.
- Optimised use of resources, both internal and external, across projects.
- Commercial impacts and constraints are managed.
- Ability to leverage economies of scale and maximise value.
- Provide mechanisms for measuring benefit realisation.
A group of related projects not managed as a programme are likely to run off course and fail to achieve the desire outcome. It is therefore important that programmes are run within a Programme Delivery Framework that ensures there is a focus on the overall strategic objectives. By using programme management within the framework outlined, organisations will have created an effective environment in which they can monitor and control the progress of their programmes, improving the chances of bringing them to a successful conclusion.
