Project and program management may look more or less like the same job, but they are completely different things and it is not easy to choose the right person for each task. Although both the program manager and the project manager have the same final objective, their working methods are very different and each one has to consider different problems when tackling projects.

Project Management

Managing a project is making sure all the efforts to fulfill a project within the deadline and objectives are accomplished but without considering external factors. A project manager needs to know what is the best for his project management services and has to manage the resources, materials and staff in order to finish the project successfully but it is not the duty of a project manager to know if the company has enough resources to finish the project nor has to allocate the resources for his own project. Basically a project manager is given a certain amount of resources and has to fulfill the objectives of the project in the best way possible.

Program Management

Companies usually have more than one project running at the same time. Some projects finish and some others start and several of them may overlap. When this happens it is important to have a good program manager to manage the overall human and material resources in order to fulfill all of them. It is the choice of a program manager to allocate more or less resources to each project according to their importance for the company and to cancel a project if the resources are not enough to finish it or they are necessary to complete a more important one. Program managers have to oversee the work done by project managers and assist them to fulfill the final objective.

IT Project Management

IT projects have the same problems as any other projects like the lack of resources, tight budget or lack of staff and the solutions for these problems can be found in the traditional way and with the same techniques used for any other kind of projects, but some other kind of issues may arise when tackling IT Projects like for example software problems, hardware issues, network problems, security risks etc… and these are specific to the IT field only. This is the reason to hire an expert in the field of IT project management so it is easier to fix the special problems arising from the IT field. Of course it is very important to have a good program manager when it comes to IT projects because overlapping IT projects is the same as regular projects, but with the added issues and problems.

Whatever your field of expertise is, you need good project and program managers if you want to excel in your field and accomplish all the projects on time and with the tightest budget possible. Also, if your company has to deal with IT projects it will be much better if you hire project managers who have the skill to deal with this special kind of projects.