Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti

Results
about good program management practices and the aim was to introduce
the basic program management concepts, processes and practices to the
participants. The last two workshops were focused more on supporting the
goal setting of Center’s program, and the role of our research team was to
provide tools and templates for program planning and to facilitate group
discussions. The workshops mainly received positive feedback from the
participants, but they did not attract as many attendees as desired. The
workshops participants openly criticized the low number of Center’s top
managers taking part in the workshops.
The second round of interviews was conducted six months after the first
round, between the second and the third workshop described above.
Compared to the first round of interviews, the program’s situation had not
changed significantly. Although there had been attempts to define the scope
of the program and assign responsibilities for advancing the program,
planning was not progressing in the desired manner. There had been some
concrete advances, but it seemed that they were not visible to those outside
the core program team. For many peripheral participants, the workshops
organized jointly with our research team had been the only program-related
activity they had been involved in. The common view was that the emerging
program could not demonstrate concrete plans and results, and thus was
not able to proceed to implementation. Practically all of the Center’s
managers that were interviewed expressed their dissatisfaction with the
program’s slow progress, whereas the core program team complained about
the lack of top management’s attention and direction. Further increasing
the difficulties, the vice president who had acted as the initial program
owner had left Center, and the other top managers were not able to decide
who should take over the program owner role. At the time of our interviews,
this question had been left open for several months. In practice, it seemed
that the manager of the R&D unit served as an informal program sponsor
who supported and motivated the key persons and promoted the program
both within and outside the organization.
During the interviews, various explanations for the program’s poor
progress were presented. Many of the renewal program’s key actors felt that
their authority was not clear and they did not have enough resources and
support. Both the program team and those representing the parent
organization mentioned challenges related to Center’s organizational
characteristics and culture that did not seem to support this kind of work.
Many pointed out the lack of experience in cooperating across the unit
boundaries and the related challenges in integrating the units, subsidiaries
and member organizations into one change effort. The variety of
expectations, interests and intents was seen as a source of complexity that
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