The Pitch for Program Management
In 1997, my fifth grade class took a trip to a space center. We conducted a simulated space mission. Everyone in the class had a role. I was the mission leader. As I read my script, voice booming over the microphone, and exhorted the class to work together to complete their assignments so we could blast off, I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to lead projects. I wanted to bring different stakeholders together to complete a mission.
Fast forward to 2022. While recording a podcast recently, I lamented to a colleague the nagging feeling I sometimes have that my profession is dead or dying. In an increasingly productized world, I sometimes worry whether there is still a place for program management, especially in my chosen field (tech.)
But, as we were spitballing, I realized I still believe—unwaveringly so—in what I do.
The Future of Program Management
On a personal level, I find program management more compelling than product management. With all due respect to product managers, I don’t want to become an expert in one thing. I got into program management because I wanted to avoid precisely that. I wanted to run missions.
On a professional level, I still see the need for program management. Elements of program management infuse the jobs of almost every knowledge worker—from scheduling work to briefing other teams. Maybe this means it’s not necessary to have someone dedicated to program management full-time. But, like the field trip at the space center, would the thing have gone as well if we didn’t have someone at the helm? We might have gotten to our destination, but it would have been a bumpy ride.
And, in today’s increasingly burnt out world, I’d contend that the process can sometimes be more important than the outcome. This matters on a personal level and on an organizational level. You can’t deliver indefinitely using a suboptimal process without sacrificing time, budget, or quality.
But even more importantly, productized companies focused on customers are going to have a growing need for someone with cross-functional chops to lead business projects that span multiple products. This opens up lots of exciting strategic opportunities for program managers. Possible examples include organizational strategy efforts, M&A, and employee transformations (critical for winning the war for talent.) Because I don’t see this need going away anytime soon (and because collaboration will become even more critical in a decentralized web3 world), I’m bullish on the future of project management.
To prepare for our future, program managers need to educate a generation of executives who didn’t grow up in a waterfall world on the benefits of our role. This is where the pitch for program management comes in.
What is a Pitch Deck?
Entrepreneurs develop PowerPoint presentations extolling the benefits of their product idea to convince venture capitalists to fund their nascent enterprises. The material they use to make their case? A pitch deck.
The Benefits of a Program Management Pitch Deck
I’d argue that pitch decks are helpful for everyone, not only program managers, to defend their value in a cost-cutting world. Even if the pitch deck isn’t shared with anyone outside of the team that created it, creating one is a useful exercise to ensure that team members are spending their time on the right things. After developing the content, teams can use a pitch deck to maintain focus on what they are doing and why they are doing it. Consider the pitch deck as a form of a “working backwards” exercise.
What Separates a Great Deck from a Mediocre Deck?
Imagine you are evaluating whether to buy a product online. What information would be useful to you to help you make your decision? You might want to:
See a demonstration of product features
Hear from people who’ve used the product before, along with some examples of how they’ve used it
View any data around how well the product works
Receive some sort of assurance that you could recoup your money if the product didn’t work.
Apply the same principles to your pitch deck.
The Value Proposition. Explain to executives what program managers do. For inspo, you could consider this Merit article on the differences between program and product management. Since the program manager role is flexible and variable based on project and team needs, I find it’s useful to present a “menu” of different service options for them to choose from.
The Defense. Use a mix of quantitative and qualitative data to show them how this role can help them. Examples include testimonials, descriptions of previously completed projects, and/or impact metrics (e.g., hours saved, dollars saved, number of employees hired.) You can be creative here on how to tell the story, but the focus should be on your customer.
The Format. Make the content digestible, easy to follow, and in a format that can be easily reshared. This is not the time for long narratives. Include a list of references for those who want to dive deeper.
The Delivery. Find opportunities to present your pitch deck in a variety of organizational settings, for both leadership and staff. Everyone at the company should be able to articulate what the program management function does. Give them the tools to do so.
