This article attempts to explain the definitions of the Project and Program Management areas, and their differences. Many
people think that the Project and Program Management are same, and some other people think that Program Management
is really managing computer programs. In reality, both perceptions of the people are wrong. Let’s learn about the Project
Management.

The Project Management function is a critical success factor today for many organizations. Project Management is a
discipline, which is used to organize various resources to control people, budget, and timeline to create or modify a
product and/or provide a service. As a result of this, the Project Management enables the operational excellence of the
organization. Every Project Manager needs to ensure that each project will have a clear definition of the problem that
needs to be addressed with a start and end date of the total effort. Then the Project Manager needs to ensure that the
boundaries of the project are clearly defined. Defining project boundaries is a very important part of the Project
Management and it ensures that the expectations of the internal and/or external customers are managed well. Project
boundaries really control the scope of the project and scope of the project has direct impact on the project duration and
resources.

If there is a need to change the scope of the project during the project execution, many organizations uses ‘Change Request’
process. The change request process is a way to document the requested change to the scope of the project. It is also a way to
estimate the additional effort resulted from the scope change and communicate the new effort with the leadership team.

Overall, the Project Management is a discipline to achieve the short term goals of an organization with a clear set of the
deliverables. Now let’s learn about the Program Management.

The Program Management is a leadership function to achieve the organization’s strategic goals. That means every
organization will have strategy for their products or specific key functions which enables their growth with a focus and
vision for next several years. Let’s take the product strategy for an organization and how Program Management enables their
product strategy. If an organization selling a product and making the revenue, then it is very important for that organization
to create the strategy for the product. In other words it is required to create a multi generation plan for this product.

The multi generation product plan includes the following:

1) What changes are required for the product in next coming years in order to stay in the market?

2) How much money can be sped on this particular product for next coming years?

3) How is the market demand for this product and how competitors doing?

4) What is the Voice Of the Customer for this product.

Overall, the Program Management is a leadership function to achieve the long term goals an organization.