Today’s program managers must cope with significant ambiguity and complexity across dimensions traditionally outside of their purview. Numerous stakeholders inside and outside the program office can impede progress by imposing unfunded, and often unrealistic, requirements and expectations throughout the program lifecycle. The rapid pace of technological change, along with the growing interdependencies among systems, exacerbates the complexity and management challenge. A volatile and increasingly global vendor base fuels uncertainty as entire companies can form, morph, and dissolve during the course of a program, creating unforeseen and possibly hidden supply chain risks. And a fickle budget environment characterized by budget sequesters and continuing resolutions can blind-side program officials with funding cuts that create sudden program instability. The difficulty of managing programs in this new twenty-first century environment is evidenced by the growing number of programs that have been restructured, scaled back, or terminated due to massive cost overruns and schedule delays.
In trying to improve their program management, program managers instinctively look inward to the program office and demand a more rigorous application of acquisition rules and processes, but this addresses only part of the problem. In many cases, the underlying cause is not insufficient allegiance to acquisition procedures but an inability to manage the new, complex challenges emanating from outside the traditional focus of program management processes and outside the traditional scope of program managers’ training and skills. Thus, in addition to looking inward to master existing acquisition processes and procedures, program managers should also look outward and take a 3-D view of the multi-dimensional acquisition landscape. Important questions to ask include:
- Who are all of the stakeholders in my program, including potential “special interests,” and how can I manage their conflicting and competing expectations?
- How stable are the vendors and technologies upon which my program relies?
- What are the risks in the complementary programs upon which my program depends?
The rise of complex programs has expanded the program managers’ scope of responsibilities, particularly the need to manage the expectations of an expanded contingency of stakeholders. Therefore, program managers must expand their management competencies beyond traditional Technical Management and Acquisition and Program Management to include a third-dimension, Stakeholder Management, which provides the broader set of leadership strategies, techniques, and capabilities needed to proactively address the full spectrum of variables that impact modern programs. The 3-D Program Management approach widens the management lens, enhancing each of these mutually reinforcing dimensions, to help program managers deliver complex programs on schedule, at cost, and to stakeholders’ expectations.
