Program Management Redefined: Techniques to Improve Organizational Agility

Organizations must change or be left behind.

They must sense, respond, and provide for customers' current and future needs while concurrently adopting new technologies, innovations, and ideas ... all without missing a beat.

No pressure, right?

That's why it's important to grasp concepts that bring out the best in your people, to help them learn, lead, and conquer new challenges.

It all comes down to creating an environment that works for your team and building an organization that can bend with the winds of change and guide the ship through any storm.

Bottom line: We all need to be agile. Not just delivery and operations teams, but portfolio and program management teams as well.

After over three decades of providing project, program, and portfolio management support to many organizations, Jim Carilli wrote Program Management Redefined: Techniques to Improve Organizational Agility as an opportunity to give back to the profession that has served him so well throughout his career by helping organizations run smoothly and successfully.

Through his experiences, he has seen first-hand the evolution of organizational agility and the direct and tangible benefits provided by today's practices to those organizations that employ them.

Program Management Redefined shares those discoveries to help others in program management and associated disciplines with new ideas so you may reap the benefits agile practices provide.

"An excellent and unique approach to program management by Dr. Carilli. I'm sure this work will become a benchmark in the industry." - Mike Sutton, PMP, Lead Project Manager EPA Enterprise Content Management System (Ret.)

"With such limited agile guidance for programs, it is refreshing to see a contemporary approach to program management." - Mike Harkins, Agile Transformation Coach with certifications from Scrum.org, Scrum Alliance, and SAFe; Founder of The Harkins Leadership Group

Over his 30-year career in project, program, and portfolio management, Jim Carilli has had the pleasure of working with teams in a variety of organizations, allowing him to hone his skills and develop fresh ideas about the way that organizations can run more efficiently and effectively, leading teams to create a productive environment with a positive work culture. Jim has led teams at Aetna, KPMG, Deloitte, Computer Sciences Corporation, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, among others. Currently, he is an associate partner/senior program manager at IBM. This book was inspired not only by his career in project and program management but also by his work outside the office in developing literature on management, including the research he performed for his doctoral dissertation, "The perceived effectiveness of the Scaled Agile Framework(R) in software development organizations: A mixed methods exploratory case study." Jim's expertise in the management arena has been utilized in his role as a subject matter expert reviewer for two of PMI's ANSI-accredited peer-reviewed foundational standards, including The Standard for Program Management, fourth edition, PMI (2017), and A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), sixth edition (2017). Jim helped lead the development of the first edition of PMI's Requirements Management: A Practice Guide (2016) as the vice chairperson and a contributing author. Earlier, in 2013, Jim served as a core team member and contributing author for a significant update to the third edition of The Standard for Program Management. He also served as a reviewer for The PMBOK Guide, fifth edition (2013), and The Standard for Portfolio Management, third edition, PMI (2012). Jim has been a contributing author for multiple peer-reviewed publications, including those published by the Academy of Human Resource Development, Scrum Alliance, and Project Management Institute's Annual Global Congress. As a guest lecturer at the American University, Kogod School of Management, Jim has addressed MBA students on program management, project management, and agile methods and practices. A retired Army Medical Service Corps officer for the U.S. Army National Guard, Jim holds a Ph.D. in technology management from Indiana State University, an M.B.A. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and a B.S. in management information systems from Central Connecticut State University. Jim also holds a variety of certifications, including the Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP), Program Management Professional (PgMP), and Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute; Agile certifications, including Certified Scrum Master (CSM) from the Scrum Alliance; and Scaled Agilist (SA) and Lean Portfolio Manager (LPM) certifications from Scaled Agile, Inc. He also holds several technical certifications including the Information Technology Infrastructure Library Foundation certificate in Service Management, and several certifications and badges provided by Atlassian, AWS, PwC, and IBM. Jim resides in Florida with his wife Debi and three dogs who focus on a different type of agility.