Organizations use programme management in a variety of situations and to pursue different organizational objectives: innovation and growth; organizational realignment; and the effective and efficient delivery of change.

We hope the following tips for successful programme management are useful to both programme managers and equally applicable to project managers responsible for complex strategic projects. ​

These tips are derived from the guide MSP – Managing Successful Programmes, seen as the leading best practice guide for programme management and the go-to certification for programme managers, business change managers and the natural next step for senior project managers.

What is Managing Successful Programmes (MSP)

MSP – Managing Successful Programmes is a framework which outlines: a management lifecycle; programme roles; and recuring management themes for successful programme management. At its heart are 7 principles of which this post and our top tips are derived from. They are:

• Lead with purpose
• Collaborate across boundaries
• Deal with ambiguity
• Align with priorities
• Deploy diverse skills
• Realize measurable benefits
• Bring pace and value.

These 7 principles act as ‘guiding obligations’ and their continued application throughout the programme are vital to support good practice programme management and achieve value.

They are applied from the very first phases of a programme – identification, definition and planning – through to its closure. All 7 principles are integrated within MSP’s governance themes and enacted through MSP’s process lifecycle.

© Axelos Ltd 2020

Let’s explore further.

Tip 1: Lead with purpose

By understanding and regularly communicating desired outcomes.

This enables:

• Purpose led communications and engagement with stakeholders
• Alignment of projects to the programme’s aims
• Focus on what’s important

Tip 2: Collaborate across boundaries

As programmes affect many teams and may result in impacts beyond the boundaries of the organization, programme teams need to enable effective cross-organizational relationships, sometimes where these relationships don’t already exist.

Collaboration enables progress and achievement of outcomes, though it’s important to support it with purposeful engagement and agreement on:

• Ways of working
• Responsibilities for work
• Clarity on decision making
• How teams will interact and share information

Tip 3: Deal with ambiguity

Uncertainty increases with complexity of which programmes are typically complex due to their geographic or technical scope, breadth of stakeholders or degree of change – characteristically ‘transformational’.

Programmes need to determine the best approach to deal with high levels of ambiguity. Some programmes may choose to deal with ambiguity by reducing risk as much as possible. This may, however, not be a practical or feasible approach for all programmes. Another choice to move forward is to embrace uncertainty, volatility, complexity and ambiguity and to create an environment where people can work effectively with high uncertainty. An environment:

• Where the applicable risk appetite is understood and agreed
• With transparency, information-sharing and evidence-based decision making
• Where high risk areas have greater focus, with applicable review points and estimates reflecting levels of uncertainty
• Where ways of working support and enable more confidence when dealing with high uncertainty, perhaps by adopting concepts common to ‘agile ways of working’.

Tip 4: Align with priorities

The environments that programmes operate in don’t stand still. It’s important that programmes realign and adjust with changes to organizational strategy and priorities. To enable continuous alignment:

• Maintain a communications channel with strategic decision-makers
• Revisit programme aims, priorities, scope, deliverables and roles – making necessary adjustments
• Engage stakeholders, ensuring they understand why and what has changed, whilst providing information on the impacts of these adjustments.

Tip 5: Deploy diverse skills

Tip 5 is focused on deploying the ‘right’ skills at the ‘right’ time. Programmes require a diverse mix of skills, some which may not currently be present in the organization. This may mean developing the required skills and capability of internal resources or sourcing skills externally. It’s important not to solely rely on external resources, as it could be a missed opportunity to develop skills important for the organization’s future success. Therefore, it’s important to:

• Understand early the required organizational capability and capacity to deliver the programme’s aims
• Provide clarity around the skills and capabilities required, how they will be developed or procured from inside or outside of the organization
• Support stakeholders and team members to gain access to knowledge and information to do their work and ways of working appropriate to the nature and environment of the work
• Don’t just focus on skills associated with delivering outputs, programmes are about achieving outcomes of benefit.

Tip 6: Realize measurable benefits

Creating outcomes that lead to benefits is the heart of programme management. However, many organizations still lack the required skill, knowledge or focus on achieving outcomes of benefit. Some hints on achieving outcomes of benefit:

• Ensure stakeholders are engaged from benefit identification to realization, with two-way communication. Engaged people are the key ingredient to realizing benefits
• Ensure benefits are measurable, if not how do we know that they have been realized
• Align projects and work to achievement of benefits
• Focus decision making on realizing outcomes of benefit – programmes are outcome focused, not output focused
• Ensure outcomes are embedded – don’t withdraw resources without assurance.

Tip 7: Bring pace and value

Pace is a concept related to the timing of certain aspects of the work and their alignment with other key events and objectives. Therefore, it’s important to establish the right ‘change pace’ to enable outcome achievement alongside BAU activities. Some tips in achieving the right pace of change:

• Empower decision making close to the day-to-day work
• Adapt and align to programme and business priorities
• Plan delivery of capabilities and outcome achievement with stakeholders
• Adopt a framework such as MSP, that:
  • Brings rigour to programme coordination
  • Brings structure and transparency
  • Focuses on achieving outcomes of benefit
  • Encourages continuous improvement.

MSP Training & Certification (Foundation & Practitioner)

MSP Foundation: The Foundation course explains how the MSP programme management framework operates and concludes with the MSP Foundation certification exam. The Foundation certification aims to assess a participant’s understanding of the MSP framework.

MSP Practitioner: The Practitioner course is designed to consolidate and refine knowledge gained during the Foundation course and prepare participants for the MSP Practitioner certification exam. The Practitioner certification aims to assess a participant’s ability to apply the MSP framework on a given scenario.

MSP course can be completed by attending an in-person training course or by purchasing a self-paced e-learning course.

Who will especially benefit from learning and applying the MSP framework:

• Programme managers;
• Business change managers; and
• Project managers seeking greater insights in tackling the challenges of larger, more complex strategic projects.

Visit our MSP Learn More page for more information.