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

Theoretical background
to the program manager and the project managers (Ferns, 1991; Office of
Government Commerce, 2007).
The current literature on program management suggests distinct
management processes and procedures for programs. While the traditional
project management processes remain relevant in managing the program’s
projects, novel management processes are also proposed. The Managing
Successful Programmes standard by the UK Office of Government
Commerce (2007) and the Standard for program management by Project
Management Institute (2006) both emphasize stakeholder management
and benefits management. According to these standards, benefits
management is about identifying, defining, and tracking the expected
benefits of the program to ensure that they are achieved, including both
tangible and intangible benefits and both intermediate and final outcomes
of the program. Stakeholder management is about identifying stakeholders
inside and outside the parent organization, analyzing how each stakeholder
may affect the program or be affected by it, and developing and realizing a
stakeholder management strategy to engage the stakeholders in the
program. Related to benefits management and stakeholder management,
program management literature also promotes value management (Thiry,
2002, 2004a), which can be used to define the program’s business
objectives and to identify the best ways to achieve them by balancing the
stakeholder needs with the available resources. The Program Management
Standard by Project Management Institute (2006: 12) also adds program
governance, defined as “the process of developing, communicating,
implementing, monitoring and assuring the policies, procedures,
organizational structures, and practices associated with a given program”.
Even though the unique nature and special managerial challenges of
programs have been recognized, the number of studies that provide
scientific, empirical evidence on the appropriate program management
practices is still very limited (Artto et al., 2009). In this dissertation, an
attempt is made to provide such evidence on the management of large-scale
internal change programs. The study aims to contribute to the theoretical
understanding of the characteristics and the appropriate management
approaches of such programs.
The four concepts defining a temporary organization, time, task, team and
transition presented by Lundin and Söderholm (1995), can be applied to
characterize change programs as a distinct type of a temporary
organization. Firstly, the concept of time concerns the program duration.
Compared to other types of temporary organizations, change programs are
relatively long enduring. Dietrich (2007) actually characterizes programs as
semi-permanent organizing frames that in terms of duration are located
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