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Program Management: The Need for Trust

One of the biggest challenges for the Program Manager and one of the biggest necessities is to build trust with all the different members of the program that he / she interacts with. It's a challenge because the Program Manager is usually the one stuck in the middle of every problem, and it's a necessity because without it the Program Manager will never be able to get people to buy in to the resolution to the problem. Here are a few examples of where trust issues can impact the program. (In a followup posts, I'll talk about how you can build trust to avoid these problems)

• Project Managers: In previous posts, I've talked about the various components of the dashboard that your project managers should be reporting on to keep you aware of the status of the project. Components like the project risk assessment, milestone log, etc... The health of the program depends on your project managers accurately reporting on those items because you will not have the time to track each project in detail. But unless your project managers trust that you will not beat them up over issues that come up with their projects, they are going to delay telling you about the issues as long as possible. In some cases, that will be long enough to slip the program itself into yellow or red. You need your project managers to trust that you are there to help them solve their problems so that they report issues to you as quickly as possible.
• Steering Committee, Executive Management: These individuals also have to have trust in you as the program manager, because when you come to them with a problem for an individual component or the program as a whole, they need to have confidence that you have a handle on the problem and that you'll make sure it doesn't pop up again. Even more importantly, they have to have confidence that when you are aware of and reporting all the problems that they need to act on.
• Project Teams: These people are the ones in the trenches working hard to make sure the program is moving forward and that you are going to deliver on time. They are unlikely to have any direct contact with the senior sponsors of the program, so they need to have faith in you as the program manager that you are representing their hard word to those senior sponsors, giving them the credit they deserve. If they believe that, it will give them the motivation to keep putting in the extra effort required to keep the program on track.