Managing Successful Programmes

In the last two posts of this series I have started down the line of understanding the value chain of a programme, and therefore what it is we need to quality assure.

This post steps back for a moment to think about the sort of process we need to design in our Quality Management Strategy – the how of quality assurance.

One of the major differences between a programme and a project is the very much higher likelihood of change in a programme than in a project:

• Firstly, the programme itself may change direction over its lifetime, reflecting changes in the surrounding environment;
• Secondly, the precise makeup of the project portfolio may change to deal with new opportunities and threats, or to accommodate changes in programme direction;
• Thirdly are the inherent changes within each project in the portfolio.

So the process(es) we invent and document in a Quality Management Strategy must be designed from the start to accommodate change in any of the inputs. That implies ongoing review at a number of nested levels.

Earlier posts in this series

• Quality Management Strategies - 1
• Quality Management Strategies - 2