Being organized is a critical component of business success. It offers an array of benefits, including opportunities for expenditure reductions, resource planning, and time management. Introducing organizational methods for projects or profitable business undertakings can positively impact overall business performance. With clearer guidelines and timelines, employees can execute business decisions more efficiently and effectively. This can be achieved through program management. Currently, there are a lot of tools that make program management much easier. In this article, let us explore some of the popular program management tools.
What Is Program Management?
Program management covers the organization of projects. Project is an umbrella term that covers a series of tasks tackled to meet a business objective. The management of these projects is comparable to business transformation and change management practices. The result of these management practices is that they offer more streamlined systems of execution and higher efficiency.
Program managers are critical to ensuring overall business objectives and goals are met while successfully completing projects. Their list of responsibilities includes:
- Advising stakeholders to ensure they are reaping maximum benefits
- Assessing projects, understanding their requirements, and putting together plans for execution
- Auditing and quality assurance are easier to undertake, with all projects being simultaneously for a blanket and accurate result.
- Mentoring project teams allow employees to understand their role at an organizational level rather than as a contributor to a project. This helps keep the corporate culture in line with the goals to be achieved
- Planning strategies for project execution is the most important responsibility. Program managers are responsible for the value of all projects undertaken, and they prioritize planning and requirements accordingly. This maximizes both the organization’s time and resources
Program management, when executed correctly, offers a wide range of benefits to the organization. Some of them are:
- It ensures flexibility and quick adaptation of changes
- Offers a quick understanding of how project actions are dependent on each other
- Makes it easier to allocate resources based on a birds-ey view of how projects need to be delivered
Because program management is adapted to the corporate environment, the practice is conducted by those working in the organization for a long time. With their experience plus technology could offer a healthy mix of tried and true strategies with constant innovation.
Program Management Tools
47% of organizations that have implemented some form of technological intervention, particularly software, claim their business greatly benefitted from the investment. Applications in this field often take manually conducted tasks such as creating GANTT and PERT charts into a virtual space. This ensures both information provided for input and output are the most accurate to assist with pinpoint business decision making.
Microsoft Project
The world-renowned IT giant offers a quick and easy-to-use solution to manage multiple projects. The software is particularly useful for projects that depend on multiple teams within the organization. Benefits include:
- Being able to track all changes and developments within a project or multiple projects
- Scheduling software is extremely flexible and can be customized as per project requirements
- Prediction and risk prevention are easily managed with the use of the software
- Creating reports and records for auditing purposes or general organization can be easily conducted
Teamweek Review
For organizations looking for structuring that is more visually dynamic, Teamweek Review may be the right kind of investment. Corporate behemoths like Disney and Netflix use the software. Benefits include:
- Drag and drop options for task allocations and project management
- Timelines can be monitored based on projects, the grouping of projects, or by the employees working on the same
- For the organization of a smaller number of smaller-scale projects, this is a significantly easier interface to use
- Timelines can be easily shared with team members and other stakeholders
Monday.com
Philips and the Discovery channel use this popular management tool to handle their projects. The easy-to-use interface is simple to adopt within organizations and is considered one of the best software to use with auditing and quality control. Benefits include:
- An entirely customizable project dashboard to ensure you’re getting the information you want first.
- Integration with 3rd party applications and tools to expand on the software abilities
- Simple to use timeline tracking tools
- Considered the best project management software to use for comprehensive data views
Projectmanager.com
This tool offers the highest level of customization provided by program management software on the market. The program allows you to customize your IT solution to include elements that your organization feels are relevant. Benefits include:
- Integrates with G Suite allowing for seamless use across Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Hangouts, etc
- Management of usually manual tools such as Gantt charts and WBS diagrams integrated into the software
- Software platform dedicated to managing multiple projects simultaneously, i.e., program management
- Team workload distributions are available in a simple-to-understand format
Final Thoughts
Program management covers the organization of projects or business undertakings by an organization. Program management aims to reveal interdependencies within projects, introducing more flexible approaches to project undertakings and a more efficient and effective resource distribution method. Introducing a technology component or virtual tools for program management will offer more accurate results to map execution plans and an easier way to chart and map activities and interactions.
