An Investigation of Programme Management and Application to a University Research Institute

Programme (or program) management can be regarded as the co-ordination and implementation of a defined set of related projects to achieve an organization’s strategic objectives. This differs from project management (i.e. as detailed in PMBoK and PRINCE2), which focuses on the management processes and activities required to deliver a specific business product or service. Although programme management has been adopted by a number of RTE (research, technology and engineering) organizations, there are different views of the subject as well as a lack of agreement in the literature on best practice. Therefore, this paper will review the discipline of programme management, including discussion of the UK standard for this practice called Managing Successful Programmes (MSPTM). The paper will cover a case study application of programme management to a university research institute, which involved managing the difficult start-up phase of the institute. The initial findings from this application include a need to focus on managing relationships through a consultative approach; a need for effective programme performance measurement and control mechanisms; and the importance of being able to readily adapt and modify the programme to respond to changing external requirements.