My experience and observation on Program Management is from the Tech industry- however, I believe the same concepts apply in other industries as well, just that the subject matter expertise expected is different.
Program Management is a tough function– the role requires someone with the ability to deep dive and understand the function inside out and to be able to articulate the what, why and how of the problem and solution backed by data. Program Managers front the initiatives and field questions from a diverse set of stakeholders and dependent teams and are expected to answer questions on what, why and how. This means Program Managers are expected to wear multiple hats– product management, tech/business/operations and analytics. A really good program manager will tick all these boxes and are a force multipliers in achieving the outcomes. Good PM’s are typically very focused on the outcomes, have good questioning and critical thinking skills, not adversarial in their demeanor and untethered from organizational boundaries in their interactions with teams.
Program Managers also gets a bad rap. This is because there is a wide spectrum of program managers in the real world (from paper pushers to force multipliers) and one’s opinion is shaped by their own experience dealing with PM’s. I am going to speculate that majority of the program managers tend to have a different set of expectations (than the above) of the role and under deliver.
In the Tech field, having the “T” in the Program Manager is critical– I hear PM’s who say they are technical because they work with software developers. My instinct is to fire those PM’s. As per ChatGPT “A Technical Program Manager should have strong technical skills in areas such as software development, cloud infrastructure, network design, data analysis, and system architecture. This will help them understand technical challenges, provide guidance to technical teams, and evaluate technical solutions” and I agree with ChatGPT on this. I expect “Technical” PM’s to be at par with a Software Development Manager for their design and architecture skills– most “T”PM were Engineers in their early career.
Being a PM can be very rewarding– It is an opportunity to own and drive the end to end functions without being tethered to organization boundaries.