In recent years, many companies have shifted from Waterfall to Agile methodologies to PMOs and then to innovation units. However, these transitions are sometimes driven more by buzzwords than by a solid assessment of where the organization stands now, where it aims to be next year, and its vision for the next five years.

In the rush to adopt the next “best practice,” organizations risk overlooking the fundamentals: clarity of purpose, cross-functional buy-in, and the ability to measure progress meaningfully. When these basics are missing, even the most celebrated methodologies can become little more than expensive experiments — and leave your organization missing a critical function. 

However, establishing effective project and program management practices is often harder than it appears. By looking at real-world examples of both success and failure, we can uncover the factors that truly make a difference and outline practical first steps for assessing your enterprise’s project and program management approach, identifying strengths and addressing the gaps that may be holding your organization back.

The challenge of establishing effective project and program management

There are a number of critical elements that go into the success or failure of an organization’s project and program management practices. One common struggle is the ability to determine whether the need to improve process, deliverables, speed to market, or margin lies in project management, program management, or portfolio management. In other words, the organization must identify whether challenges exist in how individual deliverables are executed, how related projects are coordinated and scheduled, or how strategic initiatives and programs are aligned with overall business objectives — though this isn’t always easy to do.

Another key challenge is the varying levels of respect and recognition that project and program management receive within the enterprise. As a senior consultant working across multiple firms — often within the same industry — it’s clear that while some organizations empower experienced project and program managers as strategic partners with a seat at the leadership table, others reduce their roles to administrative support. When leadership fails to value these capabilities, that mindset tends to permeate the entire organization, preventing these functions from being as effective as the company needs them to be. 

PMOs are often viewed as a fix for all project management problems. In organizations where project management lacks structure or respect, a PMO can help improve delivery, build capability, and increase project success. However, it’s important to focus on simplifying work, removing unnecessary complexity, and making it easier to achieve results. The potential solutions don’t have to be discrete — a PMO can establish processes and allocate resources to support an agile transformation, addressing challenges in consistency, delivery, transparency, and performance metrics. 

In addition, complex enterprise programs need to maintain the flexibility of “agile” approaches without being constrained by rigid “Agile” frameworks. Over the past two years, formal Agile processes and principles have fallen out of favor because they often didn’t adapt well across all business areas, and strict adherence caused many organizations to abandon them.

Successes, recovery, and failure in real-world scenarios

Throughout my time as an independent consultant, I have seen program and project management practices that range from highly engaged and strategic to fledgling and ignored. However, it can be difficult from inside an organization to understand how those practices will impact your company until you undergo a large-scale transformation.

Here are a few examples from my time that underscore the critical nature of these teams’ roles in transformation initiatives, showcase the benefits of well-built program and project management teams, and demonstrate what can happen when these practices fail to receive the support they need.

A path to success: When program management is done right

Occasionally, I have had the opportunity to partner with organizations where project and program management are deeply embedded and highly respected. In one such case, I worked as a management consultant with a global financial services firm that was undergoing a major transformation of its IT self-service and global HR platforms.

The firm’s leadership knew that this was a multi-year endeavor and required tight coordination between many groups within the organization and an outside team to help design and manage the projects.

The firm had the right resources and processes in place, including:

• Experienced project and program managers
• Senior stakeholders who were directly involved in the strategy, process, and delivery
• Collaborative teams in IT, digital strategy, operations, and content/knowledge
• Weekly status meetings that were transparent, with blockers openly discussed, and achievable timelines
• A sense of agility without any of the formality, with the ability to pivot when needed
• The knowledge that the platforms needed to be designed and built in phases, with senior leadership’s acknowledgment of the release schedules and feature sets

The organization’s highly effective program and project management enabled successful IT and HR transformations. For the IT self-service portal, we executed a phased redesign of the entire platform, introduced mobile functionality, and elevated its visibility by featuring the app on the main headquarters’ entry screens. For the global HR platform, we collaborated with multiple enterprise teams to deliver a cohesive user experience and technical design, while experienced program managers led a comprehensive overhaul of more than 5,000 pieces of global HR content. 

Ultimately, the success of these multi-year, $20 million initiatives was driven by strong project and program management practices; the organization’s recognition of their strategic importance was highlighted at the headquarters’ main lobby screens.

Righting the ship: When program and project management needs an overhaul

In another consulting project, I worked with a global financial services firm, along with a group of consultants, brought in when the firm recognized that critical path software releases of a Salesforce.com and data lake project were behind schedule, missing requirements, and full of bugs. As part of this team, we found that the requirements were not well documented, an “Agile transformation” had occurred, and the management of new technology was not fully vetted.

When these issues were uncovered, the enterprise needed to reevaluate its strategic approach to its technology ecosystem. 

The external consulting team and I:

• Created a new operating model for a key part of the organization.
• Determined that the IT group, especially the technology vendor, required a very strict agile process. We started daily scrum sessions, a daily software build, and a release pipeline managed by one of the consultants in order to overcome some critical deficiencies with the vendor’s teams.
• Drastically altered program management and status reviews. We created a daily dashboard of issues and eliminated unnecessary PowerPoint decks. We celebrated when blockers were solved.
• Established a portfolio management team across business, technology, and data leaders. We quickly funneled questions or issues in regular sessions to leaders and technical architects.

Within three months, robust project and program management practices were established, creating full transparency and ensuring vendor accountability. Requirements were thoroughly documented, and the release cycle transitioned to a monthly cadence with minimal bugs, no rollbacks, and consistent on-site leadership support for over a year. This demonstrated that comprehensive project, program, and portfolio management are essential for the successful execution of large-scale, strategic initiatives.

An unsalvageable venture: When program management is too far gone

As a management consultant, I was part of a team engaged by a U.S.-based brokerage firm facing a pivotal decision about how to achieve its future objectives. Our role was to assess the organization’s current state, identify opportunities for optimization, and recommend improvements across project and program management, organization workflows, data management, client engagement, and retention strategies.

Although the firm nominally had program and project managers, there was little coordination across initiatives, and many efforts were operating in silos with limited visibility. It wasn’t until independent consultants were brought in that leadership fully realized the extent of the gaps—missing foundational project and program management practices, decentralized decision-making, missed budgets and timelines, and minimal documentation across key initiatives. We found a disconnected state of tactical project management and a lack of coordination of the programs across leadership, marketing, technology, and operations.

As part of a thorough assessment of the company’s current state, we found that:

• Projects were tracked without rigor, timelines were missed, and management had not enforced processes.
• Related programs did not have coordination and transparency, and IT feature sets didn’t align with their customer base and profitability.
• Related projects were not tracked, were behind schedule, and had requirements made by one group but not vetted by program leads.
  • As an indicative example, we found that the firm’s least profitable customers were those who engaged exclusively via mobile apps. This was well known by leadership but not shared with IT program managers, who spent millions on native mobile apps.
• Marketing project managers were not pushed to develop relevant and timely content, and there was no knowledge management platform or marketing spend dashboard.
• The “green checkmark” status meetings never had transparency. As consultants, we initiated a weekly Friday morning status with the President, where each consultant presented the true status of digital, IT, data, marketing, and client engagement initiatives.

Once robust best practices were established, leadership recognized that the organization faced a strategic crossroads: either invest in rebuilding and scaling the business or consider divesting the firm. Ultimately, the absence of structured project and program management, combined with uncoordinated IT and marketing spending, compelled leadership to sell the enterprise. They concluded that years of neglected project management would require a multi-million-dollar investment to restore the business to a path of sustainable profitability.

How your organization’s project and program management capabilities compare

There are many challenges to establishing effective project and program management practices and, as the examples above have illustrated, the consequences are anything but trivial. When looking to better understand and evaluate your enterprise’s current capabilities in project, program, and portfolio management, start with the following:

1. Assess current project management maturity

• Evaluate how projects are delivered across business divisions and even country units.
• Identify pain points such as budget overruns, missed deadlines, lack of resource visibility, or duplicated efforts.
• Measure project success rates and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Align with senior stakeholders on the enterprise’s culture about project management and any change management that will be necessary.

2. Align process with strategic goals

• Determine if the organization’s strategic objectives (e.g., transformation, innovation, expansion) require a large or small change to the project/program management capability.
• Assess whether a formal PMO could help ensure projects are aligned with broader business goals and deliver measurable value.

3. Analyze resource and capability gaps

• Evaluate whether teams have the skills, tools, and processes needed to manage complex, cross-functional initiatives.
• Identify whether there’s a need for standardized methodologies (e.g., Agile, Waterfall, hybrid) across projects.

4. Define success metrics

• Establish KPIs to evaluate the PMO’s effectiveness over time, such as:
  • Project success rates
  • Budget and timeline adherence
  • Stakeholder satisfaction
  • Strategic alignment of initiatives

Your program and portfolio management strategy should include integration points for systems and dashboards to help business leaders evaluate metrics and innovations on the cusp of adoption. It’s extremely difficult to evaluate the success or even trajectory without regular updates of KPIs and some form of leadership dashboard. In addition, risk must be evaluated with frequent milestone touchpoints during all the relevant projects within the program. 

The future of project and program management

As the project and program management landscape continues to evolve, new methodologies will emerge, tools will become more sophisticated, and the pressure to deliver faster, cheaper, and better will only grow. Yet the core challenge remains the same: aligning execution with strategy, building organizational trust, and creating the conditions for teams to deliver consistently high-value outcomes. Organizations that master this balance will be better positioned to adapt to market changes, innovate effectively, and sustain long-term growth.

This is where Consulting 2.0 comes in. An external partner who has supported complex transformations can help you see the blind spots, avoid costly missteps, and accelerate your maturity in program and project management. Experienced leaders who have built these functions before can ensure you’re not just adopting the latest trend but implementing the right practices for your organization’s unique needs. In a discipline where the difference between success and failure often comes down to experience, having someone who’s been there before is not just an advantage — it’s a necessity.