Working as a Program Manager

After the last time I wrote about being a Program Manager, I realized I was being a bit pithy and the message got a bit lost. So here it is again more directly and succinctly:

“My job as a Program Manager is to ensure that my team is working on the highest value opportunities. To do this successfully I have to accumulate, interpret and share information from our customers, competitors and leadership.”

That’s it, that’s the job.

Clearly there is a lot of details here but I tend to break up how I approach this work as follows:

1. Create clarity – Clearly explain what problem you are attempting to solve, or feature you are trying to develop, this should include an idea of the impact it will have on customers.
2. Define goals – Define how you intend to measure success. Is it more users? more clicks? Improved satisfaction?
3. Develop a customer journey – You need a way to quickly articulate how this product or feature takes the customer from a known problem to some successful outcome.
4. Show business value – Help speak to the business value, that is, how it helps generate or improve revenue streams?
5. Execution strategy – This answers how you will build the widget. You will need contributions from engineering, management and leadership to ensure this is feasible from a cost and overall strategy perspective.