From understanding and managing the overall program budget to resource planning and forecasting and more, program managers are an essential component to IT success. They manage risks and dependencies, prioritize projects within their programs, and develop strategic roadmaps to ensure alignment is achieved.
“Program managers are responsible for collaborating with IT leadership to provide effective planning, structure, and prioritization of all efforts related to a governance domain or one or more specific strategic programs,” said Tim Brooks, Executive Director of the Portfolio and Project Management Office (PPMO) and the Service Management Office (SMO). “They are responsible for demonstrating the alignment of the IT portfolio with the university strategy and priorities.”
Primary goals associated with this important role include standardizing executive reporting from Planview, ensuring appropriate levels of resource allocation across projects and their program, and assisting with quarterly forecasts. But there are many subgoals associated with this important position. Subgoals include:
- Facilitating informed investment decision making for their assigned programs.
- Ensuring WashU is realizing the benefits of program investments.
- Effectively managing a prioritized annual portfolio that is aligned with the university and IT strategies.
- Enabling an effective program-level decision-making and prioritization model that allows us to make decisions at the appropriate level within the organization, reducing the time needed to develop, review, and approve new projects.
- Supporting our equity, diversity, and inclusion values by providing university wide collaboration, feedback, visibility, and transparency.
- Making sure we have established and well understood accountabilities and responsibilities within assigned programs.
- Collaborating with other Program Managers and IT Leadership to identify common risks, resource constraints, or other potential program collisions.
“Program managers are constantly asking, is the university getting the value out of that investment,” Brooks said. “They are accountable to program sponsors; they identify metrics and prepare reports, they work with stakeholders to establish and monitor project and program metrics to determine overall health and whether we are on track to deliver the intended value.”
The WashU IT program managers bring a wealth of knowledge, skills, and ability to the many projects and programs in flight at WashU. Together, they have a combined 98 years of experience in project management, nearly 35 years in program management, 27 years in health care, 45 years in higher education, and nearly 26 years at WashU.
Tim Brooks, Executive Director of the PPMO & SMO
The combination of education and experience among these talented team members make them a force committed to excellence. Collaboration is a key ingredient to their success, with program managers consistently meeting through a Teams channel to ask questions, address challenges, and ensure everyone is on the same page.
“We have concurrent challenges going on at all times and that’s a reality at WashU and WashU IT,” said Jason Oglesby, the Program Manager for the Research Lifecycle Program in the Research Domain. “You have to be flexible but keep your goals in mind. You’re trying to keep everything on track and stay organized. You’re not necessarily always trying to be the subject matter expert, but at times you are the decision maker. Whether that’s through governance or an individual group of stakeholders, whatever it may be, you’re trying to keep people aligned and in the loop without being in the weeds.”
Laverdure, who serves as a Program Manager on Student Sunrise, which is the new university wide student information system, added: “We have to successfully manage and execute all our programs, which are varied in discipline, varied in different stages. We have to grow and mature the profession and the value of program management. We constantly use feedback, which is how we attack our financials. We strive to achieve uniformity and consistency even though our programs are so differently structured and funded in completely different manners.”
Kristi Lenz, Program Manager for IT Asset Management, noted she feels part of a broader team of program managers across the Projects and Portfolio Management Office (PPMO), and she enjoys working with the wide variety of professionals from across WashU IT, which includes business analysts, project managers, communications professionals, learning and development specialists, stakeholders, and more. The scope of Lenz’s program is to create a centralized IT asset inventory for all of WashU.
A visual representation was offered by Alesya Bernatskya, Program Manager for CyBear Secure Program, who noted, “I read somewhere that program managers are like train conductors and I don’t agree with that. I think program managers are like airport traffic controllers. Every airplane is an individual project in the airport traffic control. PgMs assess all the movements and all the dependencies and all the controls for the whole airport.” Bernatskya’s domain falls under security, risk, and compliance.
Professing the value of program managers, Chief Information Security Officer Chris Shull said,
“Although I’ve worked at other big universities, I’ve never been responsible for so many concurrent projects, with so many resources involved in delivering them. As a result, my initial instinct of thinking I would run everything myself and be my own program manager proved to be well beyond my capacity and capability.”
Chris Shull, CISO
Speaking of Bernatskya, his Program Manager, Shull added, “(She) has a rich set of tools that empower her to manage a large portfolio of projects, ideas for projects, and financial and human resources. With so much to do and such little time to do it, our Program Manager has become a super-powered extension of me, allowing and enabling us to make much more progress overall.”
The addition of some new program managers adds to the rich tapestry of talent available in WashU IT. Mark Jacobi, Ravleen Chhatwal, and Kathleen Hilmer-Kendall bring a wealth of experience to the organization, which will help facilitate program management in support of the university and IT strategic plans. Each recognizes where they fit within WashU IT in supporting the IT ImpacT Strategic Plan.
Mark Jacobi
Job role: IT Program Manager for Data Management an Analytics
“As a strong advocate for program leadership and communication for the Data Management and Analytics team and program. Each engagement is like a big puzzle. Most all of the pieces or components are there, and the goal is getting the strategy and plan aligned to become more focused and efficient in execution to achieve the desired goals and objectives.”
Ravleen Chhatwal
Job role: IT Program Manager for the Infrastructure and Architecture Domain
“The Network Modernization project is directly part of the IT strategic plan and will impact all areas of the university for years to come. Network Modernization will provide for a secure, scalable, agile, adaptable, available, resilient, easy-to-use, automated, and sustainable infrastructure. This will help all the areas within WashU move to the next generation of digital transformation.”
Kathleen Hilmer-Kendall
Job role: IT Program Manager for Clinical Technologies
“My Program Manager role supports Clinical Technologies, which includes all School of Medicine departments and partners with Epic1 and Health Information Partners to coordinate the IT strategic roadmap and project implementation. My role will help support the ImpacT strategic plan by building and strengthening the WUIT partnership with the WUSM departments. Being a trusted partner for WUSM enables the avenue for technology to drive excellence in patience care.”