In a previous Pulse Article, I outlined five elements that are foundational for successfully delivering large-scale IT programs. I have confidence that the five elements are of value because of the level of my experience working on, leading, and reviewing hundreds of projects and programs during my career. I like the quote from Jim Bouchard, “The bridge between knowledge and skill is practice. The bridge between skill and mastery is time.” I don’t know if the 10,000-hour rule made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers” holds in all professions, but I do believe that when it comes to project and program management, working on many different projects and programs for decades gives one insights that ultimately lead to mastery.
When I arrived as the CIO of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2009, I committed to review all major IT programs, given the struggles the department was having in delivering programs successfully. At that time, DHS had more than 90 major IT programs, and I created a small team, led by myself, that systemically reviewed each one, creating action plans for programs that needed help. My review of all of these programs led me to two major findings, applicable to DHS, but relevant to many government agencies and private sector companies. The first is that many organizations underestimate the level and types of skills and experience needed to successfully run programs, particularly large and complex programs. And second, many organizations do not take seriously the need to develop a culture and hone the disciplines necessary to run successful programs and projects. I have written a number of articles related to these points, as creating an institutional capability to deliver successful programs is one of the most important things an IT organization must do.
For the past year, I have served as CEO of Learning Tree International, a company that has specialized in training for IT professionals for more than 40 years. Given what I wrote above, you might assume that I value on-the-job experience much more highly than formalized training. In reality, I favor a blended learning approach that marries a number of techniques to accelerate someone’s mastery of a particular subject. Over the past year, I have worked with the senior leadership of Learning Tree to broaden our offerings, with a vision of Learning Tree becoming the world’s premier provider of workforce development and optimization solutions for IT organizations. This goes well beyond training, to support IT organizations in developing their staff to fill needed roles with the level of competency required. Such competency comes from formal training, coaching and mentoring, and on-the-job assignments that develop the experience and judgment necessary to master a subject area. The key is to do it in such a way to accelerate the time to master a subject area.
So my experiences in project and program management have led me to work with Hamid Aougab (he is also an accomplished project and program manager, along with a successful course author and instructor) to create a new course entitled Program Management: Essential Skills for Your Program Success. What has me most excited about this course is that we have worked to embed insights into the course from our many years of experience working on, running, and reviewing programs in both the public and private sectors. We have attempted to create a course that can accelerate an attendee’s learning, providing valuable and practical methods to help establish and effectively manage a program. But further, we offer insights on how to spot programs that are running into trouble, and what steps can be taken to help get them back on track. So many courses present the theory of project and program management — this course represents the opportunity to help establish practical program management actions that can help individuals and organizations demonstrate repeatable success.
I hope you have a chance to join us as Hamid and I will be co-teaching the course over the next year.