Managing projects and programs in a digital age require a new set of skills that project and program managers must acquire to effectively manage digital projects and programs. This article briefly reviews the various areas in which digital projects differ from traditional projects and programs.
Managing Larger number of Digital Ecosystem Stakeholders
The makeup of today’s digital solutions comprises of a myriad of players from the vastly distributed digital ecosystem. Setting up the foundation of a business system based on digital technologies involves hosting providers, various service providers providing content and community services, business and technical staff of various skills, and many other players from the organization’s internal and extended digital value chains. Managing such digital projects and programs requires an awareness of all such stakeholders and managing their expectations while delivering systems that delight customers.
Managing Integration complexity
The complexity of digital technologies underlying the subsystems that have to be integrated in a typical digital system necessitates a well thought-out execution plan. Rolling out a mobile app for example that integrates with various backend systems and interfaces with other ecosystem providers such as payment gateways and content providers can pose a complex integration and testing challenge. An effective program manager plans to orchestrate all the activities in a seamless fashion to deliver the program on time.
Testing Customer Experience
One of the hallmarks of today’s systems is ensuring that customer delight factors are built in the various legs of the overall customer experience and journey. Program managers of this digital era, therefore, have an appreciation and an awareness of such requirements and work closely with their delivery teams and overall ecosystem stakeholders to ensure these are addressed in the system delivery lifecycle.
Complying with the Regulatory requirements of the digital age
The sophistication and complexity of business systems in the digital age have spawned the need for various types of government regulations related to financials, information security, privacy, and more. A good program manager manages their programs by ensuring that such requirements are factored in the overall business requirements by collaborating with the right stakeholders.
Bridging the communications gap
One of the qualities of a project manager is to provide the leadership to bridge the communications gap between various parties and stakeholders. This requires not only leadership skills but also a broad understanding of the various types of skills that people on the team have. This quality is needed even more when managing projects in the digital realm as they involve a myriad of technologies and processes.
Practicing Agile Project Management
One of the hallmarks of digital projects implementation is their use of agile methods to meet business agility requirements. A Digital project manager is therefore quite well versed in agile practices to guide the development and implementation of digital projects. Also, as agile practices are relatively new and not all stakeholders in organizations are well versed with these approaches, a digital project manager acts as a mentor for various parts of the organization and its stakeholders in getting them on the bandwagon of agile practices and methodology.
Establishing the Digital PMO (Project Management Office)
As mentioned earlier, digital projects and landscapes have spawned a different set of activities and stakeholders across and external to the organization. Management of digital projects across these entities requires a new set of functions that must be built in today’s PMOs. A digital project manager is well versed in these new project management processes and practices to deliver the programs and projects on time and per user expectations.
These are only some of the dimensions that digital project managers must be well versed with to manage projects in the digital economy.
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