Programme management: a critical review

Abstract There is an increasing recognition that programme management provides a means to bridge the gap between project delivery and organisational strategy. Significant tensions tend to arise across this gap, however, between the inward-focused and task-oriented view of projects and strategy-focused and often emergent wider organisational view. It is argued within this paper that standard programme management approaches actually exacerbate these tensions. Through a critical review of standard programme management approaches, a number of issues are highlighted that concern (a) an excessive control focus, (b) insufficient flexibility in the context of an evolving business strategy, (c) ineffective co-operation between projects within the programme. These issues are traced back to the two flawed assumptions underlying programme management; namely that (a) programme management is in effect a scaled-up version of project management and (b) a ‘one size fits all’ approach to programme management is appropriate. In combination these observations are used to provide grounding for a fundamentally different approach to programme management designed for flexibility, enabled for adaptability in a changing business environment and focused throughout on the effective management of key stakeholder relationships.

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