The "T" of Technical Program Management

The Writeup

[Technical Program Management is also referred as Engineering Program Management, Program Management Technical, etc.]

Before jumping into the “T” of “Technical Program Management” let’s try to understand the basics in simple terminology.

Program Management: It’s all about stitching together multiple set of things to achieve a particular goal and keeping all the stakeholders informed in an independent manner. Technical Program Management: It’s a “Technical” focused program management. This means that either the goal is technical in nature or the goal requires a technical solution to be delivered. Practically, program managers are business goal driven and work with business teams (sometimes tech teams too) and technical program managers are tech goal driven and work with tech teams.

Now let’s try to understand it through a simple example. Please not that the example below are just for reference & understanding purpose and it should not be considered as an ideal set of activities.

"Assume that there is a program to make the travel faster & cheaper between two cities."

Program Manager ‘s execution:

• Evaluated current mode of travels, it’s cost and duration of travel.

• Figured out a combination of travel modes (Air + Road), (Air + Rail), (Rail + Road), etc. to reduce the cost but the travel duration is almost similar.

• Further evaluated an option to find out shorter path through road travel duration can be reduced.

• Worked with stakeholders and put together a plan to get the required funding for making smaller vehicles and electric vehicles available at Airport, Railway stations through which shorter path can be taken and fare cost can be reduced.

• The plan also include the details around reaching the break-even points and path to profitability.

• Evaluated the options to increase the frequency of flights, trains, etc.

• Identified the teams who need to work on some to tasks to execute the plan and driven alignment with the respective teams.

• Identified the risks in all above mentioned solutions, mitigation plan and tracked them to closure.

• For the above mentioned approach put together an execution plan, timeline, weekly/ monthly monitoring of key metrics like – total number of people travelling in each possible combination, average spend in travel, average duration for each combination of travel, etc.

  This requires knowledge in travel domain and about the routes of both the cities. The program manager will work with finance, legal, business teams, metrics reporting team, external bodies to prioritize the task and track the status, etc.
  

[Now let’s say the product manager came with the proposal that if we construct a bridge over a river between both the cities it will reduce the travel duration by 50% and reduce the cost of travel by 40%. This proposal has been approved and given to the civil engineering team to assess and construct]

Technical Program Manager’s execution:

• Reviewed the proposal, verified whether the proposal will really help to reduce the travel duration by 50% and cost by 40%.

• Evaluated whether the overall construction can be done by his/ her own team basis the goal of team.

• Verified whether the requirement of bridge has all the required details and approvals (legal, finance, designer, local people, govt. bodies, etc. ).

• Confirmed whether there any environmental risk to construct the bridge.

• Consulted Engineering head to review the requirement, current capacity, skill set.

• From Engineering head got the high level timelines, material requirement and funding needed to complete the construction.

• Came up with a high level timelines, associated risk & mitigation plan, engineering task (design, construction, finishing, trial run, etc.), non-engineering task (obtaining any pending alignment, approvals, change in design approvals, etc.).

• Worked with Civil engineers to put together the bridge design, cross verified if it meets the requirement.

• Ensured: if there are any risk associated with it’s quality, it’s ability to support peak traffic, plan to handle any disaster like – flood, earthquake, etc., whether the materials listed are good enough from durability or low maintenance standpoint. All of these are done basis his/ her own expertise and by probing right questions to right people.

• Ensured that the road safety requirements are included in the plan.

• Ensured that the design, delivery schedule, material listing is approved by all stakeholders.

• Tracked and verified the progress and reported it to all the stakeholders.

• Conducted trial run, gathered feedback, ensured major gaps are fixed.

• Conducted go/ no-go discussions.

• Ensured all the required security requirements are met, sign boards are placed for customers.

• Planned Bridge inauguration.

• Put together a mechanism to: a) track the travel cost and duration post launch, b) customer reported issues, and c) Issues coming up in the bridge construction. - Opening up the bridge for customers.

• Post launch metrics monitoring, tracking customer complaint & resolutions, tracking bridge construction related issues and reporting.

  This requires knowledge in civil engineering. The Technical Program Manager (TPM) will primarily work with civil engineering team, product management team, any other teams basis the dependencies like - IT team, customer support teams, business teams, etc.. In addition to these the TPM will work on setting up processes, reporting framework and will track and report the progress to respective stakeholders and leadership.

The above example demonstrates that the “T” part of program management requires the individual to have the relevant background in the technical domain to ensure: relevant questions being asked to bring clarity to the program, audit the status, be able to understand task break down and deep dive into a specific task as needed, identify the key metrics, risks and put together a mitigation plan. In addition to these the TPM should also understand the customer pain point in details to ensure that the requirement and solution addresses the real painpoint of customer, which means that he/ she should have the right skillset to understand the end customer needs/ business.

In the context of software development, at high level “T” refers to: understanding of tech design (irrespective of technologies) & design considerations, knowing different types of tech architecture, the ability to root cause the problem (you may need help from SDEs but you should know what needs to be looked into), the ability to write and understand non-functional requirement, understanding task breakdowns, ability to simplify solutions and independently audit the status.

||एकायन|| Worldly wisdom ||

To do justice for a TPM role, you need to be ready to wear different hats (product manager, engineering manager, SDEs, program manager, customer, etc.) at different times.

a) Along with actual customers (end customers for whom the solution is being developed) I also treat my stakeholders and leadership as my customer and plan the work accordingly. This helps in doing justice to expectation, prioritizing the task, being honest & transparent to everyone.

b) Prioritize the “T” which helps addresses the customer problem. Everything else is secondary.

c) Though the “T” part of TPM requires quite a lot thing but we don’t need to go deeper into each of these areas always. So, basis the comfort, criticality of project, current status and team’s maturity I identify tasks where I need to go deeper.

d) Identify most critical areas in the “T” part which can go wrong and question the team to ensure the mitigation plan or alternative is ready at before launch.

e) Last but not the least do not lose a track on the status!!

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