This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Project/Program Management -- Christian Connett has given warning of some forthcoming writing on the subject of project versus program management, and is asking for two-cent contributions to his thinking. His request triggered the following potentially pregnant thought...
There's something that's been going around in my mind more and more as I expose myself to the "agile" movement coming out of the software development arena. Agilistas like to talk about the fact that many features delivered in a software project are independent of one another, and that they can be prioritized with little regard to dependencies, delivering useable and incremental "value" with each release. However, I assume that there is some synergistic effect from delivering something close to the full collection of features. Otherwise, wouldn't the features/releases merely be projects on their own, ringing their own independent cash registers upon delivery? They would not need to be collected into the larger "project" container.
With no pun intended (although the potential certainly is there), this semi-independent, yet synergistic, character of software development certainly feels like the traditional definition of a "program" to me.
(hmmmm...The other common use of the word "program" -- an endeavor that is more on-going than finite -- also feels like the nature of software development as well, with releases for fixes and new features as the "product" matures through its life cycle.)
posted by Frank - Permanent Link -
|
View Frank Patrick's profile
