Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 August 5
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August 5[edit]
Just read the article Program management and the differences with project management and am a bit confused. In simple terms, How does the job of a project manager differ from that of a programme manager? I am guessing, from reading the article that project managers focus on delivering the outcomes and may be involved with risk management, financial tracking, managing legal issues, managing technical issues, and managing day to day project issues. I.e. They make things happen to achieve outcomes.. Whereas a programme manager is more concerned about the very high level risks and finances and their role is more focused on governance to get the right information to the board or programme director and get the right information back down to project level. Have I got this right? 2A02:C7D:B91D:AF00:885F:C288:1D59:3D1E (talk) 12:58, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
- Simply put the main difference may only be the position in a hierarchy and management is simply an the art of leader position. A program manager is probably assistant to the CEO and the project manager is assistant to the program manager. Also they all share the risk more or less because they all are responsible for who they put in a position to get things running smoothly and efficient. Because of that responsibility experience is likely much more important then a skillset in detail. --Kharon (talk) 19:53, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
- I think the first line of the article you link to is clear enough, and it matches my own experience as a project manager who is reporting to a program manager. A program is a set of projects. For example: "program I" = integrate company X with newly acquired smaller company Z. "Program I" contains several projects: Project A: integrate the IT systems + Project B: integrate the line of products of both companies + Project C: integrate the HR department and align employee contracts. etc. etc. It is a simple partonomy of goals. Program management is simply making sure all the projects line up perfectly to achieve the program goal, and tracking their progress. --Lgriot (talk) 15:12, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
- I think Lgriot said it very well. I'll just add one specific example: For a while I was a project manager for a consulting company building Internet systems. I would manage one project at a time with various clients such as Sun Microsystems. Then I was promoted to managing the western region. At that point I was a Program Manager, I went from project to project talking with each project manager and with the client to make sure things were going smoothly and helping the project manager be successful and get the resources she needed. Another aspect of it in the real world is that Program Managers tend to be much more active in the sales process (this is for consulting companies, of course it's different with internal projects). So besides going to each client to make sure things are running smoothly I was supposed to be schmoozing with them and sniffing out new opportunities to sell work. For internal programs/projects it is similar except of course there isn't the process of looking for more work, with internal programs you usually have your end users screaming for more things than you have time to do, although the Program Manager may often be in an "evangelist" type role where they are trying to sell various groups within the company on the advantage of using things like workflow, Internet, middleware, etc. to better integrate their data and to automate or streamline business processes. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:32, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
- In my experience, in client organisations in infrastructure, a programme manager acts as a middle man between the (senior) project manager who oversees delivery of a project and a programme director, who makes key strategic programme decisions. 82.17.228.64 (talk) 18:10, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
- I think Lgriot said it very well. I'll just add one specific example: For a while I was a project manager for a consulting company building Internet systems. I would manage one project at a time with various clients such as Sun Microsystems. Then I was promoted to managing the western region. At that point I was a Program Manager, I went from project to project talking with each project manager and with the client to make sure things were going smoothly and helping the project manager be successful and get the resources she needed. Another aspect of it in the real world is that Program Managers tend to be much more active in the sales process (this is for consulting companies, of course it's different with internal projects). So besides going to each client to make sure things are running smoothly I was supposed to be schmoozing with them and sniffing out new opportunities to sell work. For internal programs/projects it is similar except of course there isn't the process of looking for more work, with internal programs you usually have your end users screaming for more things than you have time to do, although the Program Manager may often be in an "evangelist" type role where they are trying to sell various groups within the company on the advantage of using things like workflow, Internet, middleware, etc. to better integrate their data and to automate or streamline business processes. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:32, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
- I think the first line of the article you link to is clear enough, and it matches my own experience as a project manager who is reporting to a program manager. A program is a set of projects. For example: "program I" = integrate company X with newly acquired smaller company Z. "Program I" contains several projects: Project A: integrate the IT systems + Project B: integrate the line of products of both companies + Project C: integrate the HR department and align employee contracts. etc. etc. It is a simple partonomy of goals. Program management is simply making sure all the projects line up perfectly to achieve the program goal, and tracking their progress. --Lgriot (talk) 15:12, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
- You might like to compare to facilitator, a person who might have program manager like duties but not their position with respect to the project managers. Dmcq (talk) 13:23, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
Where was Clara Lemlich born?[edit]
In the infobox, the birthplace of Clara Lemlich is given as Horodok, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, but in the body of the article, it is given as Horodok, Lviv Oblast. (The French Wikipedia also says Khmelnytskyi Oblast, but the German Wikipedia says Chișinău!) I only now noticed the discrepancy, after making this edit which may or may not need to be moved to the other article. The sources I've seen only say she was born in "Horodok"/"Gorodok", and don't explicitly specify which one, although The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology says she was "born in Gorodok, on the Austrian-Ukraine border" and Triangle: The Fire That Changed America says the Gorodok in question had a population of 10,000 including 3,000 Jewish people, if that helps narrow down which Gorodok it was. The article is not very frequently edited and the talk page hasn't seen a new post in years, so I figured this question might get more attention here. I apologize if some other forum is more appropriate. -sche (talk) 17:12, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
- Interestingly, городок (gorodok) simply means "village" in Russian, and I'd be surprised if horodok didn't mean the same in Ukrainian. So we have a village called "Village". :) -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 19:58, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
- horodok (Cyrillic: Городок) — "a Ukrainian name for small city." — 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:4890:FAC5:8AED:1CC9 (talk) 22:45, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
- @JackofOz: One of my favorite articles is List of redundant place names. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 00:19, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
- Thanks. And thanks again. Thanks very much. Ta. :) -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 03:55, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
-sche -- The Russian Imperial oblast names and boundaries are not necessarily the same as the Soviet oblast names and boundaries, and large areas of the Pale of Settlement were part of Poland and Romania between the wars (including Lviv, then known as Lwów). I think the standard policy is to state place of birth in biographical infoboxes in terms of the administrative units which existed at the time of birth, and there wasn't really an administratively-defined "Ukraine" in 1886... AnonMoos (talk) 22:13, 5 August 2017 (UTC)