Program Management vs. Project Management

Program Management and Project Management are interchangeably used by organizations to refer to various initiatives that they run. They may sound similar but there are quite a bit of distinct differences between the two. The differences must be well understood to ensure proper implementation and benefit realization to the optimum.

In this article we will go over what exactly does program and project management entail, what are the differences, how similar they are, their specific benefits and the key roles in terms of Program Manager and Project Manager

Understanding the Two

We all know that PMI has very clearly articulated that:

Projects are “endeavours, temporary in nature, have a defined start, middle & end and have a defined objective to be met which is often a product or a service.”

And, Project Management is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.”

Projects are usually short term and quick measures that are deployed to achieve quick results. Their goals are always very tangible and once achieved the project team is dismantled and released for deployment to other projects. Each project is unique in its team composition, time-frame and expected outputs. 

This also tells us that projects are very tactical in nature and address an immediate or impending business need.

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Orangescrum Product Update Roundup - Take a Tour

April was yet another productive month with exciting feature releases. We always want users to have a great experience using Orangescrum.

Enabling collaboration, ensuring project data confidentiality, personalization and smooth navigation within Orangescrum was the focus of the month.

Let’s us review what’s in store and how you can experience it firsthand!

Cloud Edition Updates:

1. User Role Management Feature for Cloud Edition:

Orangescrum started with the most demanding features of our cloud users. Here’s Orangescrum’s ‘User Role Management‘ feature that provides clarity to your teams with well-defined roles & responsibilities.

Is your organization struggling to manage multiple user roles securely and effectively?

What Makes It Stand Out From The Rest?

Orangescrum account previously had only 4 roles – Owner, Admin, User and Client with some restricted access.

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How Time Tracking Software’s are Dominating Timesheets

William Penn says, “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst”.

We all know how time is important to us. But we do forget about TIME MANAGEMENT while we’re busy sorting other things wisely.

If a lack of visibility on how time is spent and managed is an issue, efficient time management is simply the best way to curb this mess.

It makes teams or resources more effective, businesses more profitable and companies more prolific.

What is ‘Time Management’ exactly?

Time management is a process of planning and organizing how to divide time between several activities so that all the assigned work can be completed on or before time, within budget.

Good time management helps you to work smarter

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European Agency Achieves CSAT Score of 4.5/5 with Orangescrum at Its Core

The Orangescrum team received an interesting use case from a major European agency (who are now our customers – yay!) a few quarters ago.  They are a big organization with a complex hierarchy and a range of strategic & functional operational teams. They have been a victim of

• Silo work approaches
• Teams choosing their own tools
• IT has no control over the data privacy spread across these tools
• Aren’t confident of accurate billing
• Executive Management is unable to see actual statuses of their initiatives

See one of the actual emails from a lengthy conversation below –

Consider the following example:

My Board takes a number of decisions, based on the materials on its agenda. The decisions distill to tasks, which have a responsible person and deadline. Sometimes the tasks are complex and require the collaboration of several people. Usually, tasks are assigned to Departments, which have to organize the operational work and deliver.

The point is how to organize the process in such a way, that:

• The Board knows at any moment what is the status of all tasks, irrespective of domains, including a breakdown by due dates, assignees, etc;
• The respective Department (Head) can break down the Board task into small pragmatic tasks and assign them to single persons for delivery
• If needed various departments to be able to collaborate for the execution of the said task
• The Department Heads and the participants to see and work only what is assigned to their department or their domain/task/project and not the full portfolio of the bank.
• Reasonable system of notifications – not overly noisy. Preferably with options to configure what to notify on. The senior management certainly should not be notified on the status change of each task somewhere in the bank.

In brief, this is a concrete case we resolve now. Hope I made it clear enough.

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Orangescrum Product Update: Manage Quick Links & Customize Your Left Menu

Hello Orangescrummers! Here’s another good news for you all our cloud edition users. Now adjust Orangescrum to your expertise and needs by its ‘Quick Links’ & ‘Left Menu’ features. Easy navigation and left menu customization are in your hand. 

Orangescrum is flexible by its nature and, therefore, can be easily modified to become truly yours. We invite you to take a walk with us through this short customization guide and quickly shape Orangescrum to both your personal and professional needs.

It's always amazing to add new features by considering customers' needs and what would be the best for them.

What’s New Now?

Previously the left menu of Orangescrum’s user account was pre-defined. That means you can’t make any change to that. Suppose you don’t want Gantt chart on your left menu. But still, you had to keep that as those things were pre-defined.

But now there’s no need to compromise.

You can customize your Orangescrum account as per your wish. 

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