Programme management is the process of managing multiple ongoing inter-dependent projects. Project Management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources (i.e. people) in such a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time, customer satisfaction, risk exposure and cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service, that brings about beneficial change or added value. This property of being a temporary and a one-time undertaking contrasts with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over and over again. The discipline of project management was created to deal with the varying technical skills and different philosophy required to deliver temporary (project) work.

The first challenge of project management is to ensure that a project is delivered within defined constraints. The second, more ambitious challenge is the optimized allocation and integration of inputs needed to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, quality, risk, etc.) to meet the pre-defined objectives.

So what is the role of a PMO in relation to the management of these groupings of projects:

- Governance: Programmes need a more robust structure and control because of the larger impact their failure can have. A PMO will provide standardised processes and manage the definition, capture and dissemination of programme critical reporting and information;

- Management: At the lowest level project managers co-ordinate individual projects. They are overseen by the Programme Manager who accounts to the Programme Sponsor (or board). As mentioned above the Programme Manager needs control over the constituent projects and hence requires a PMO function to furnish him/her with the appropriate structure and information to execute the job effectively;

- Finances: Tracking of finances is a critical part of Programme Management and basic costs together with wider costs of administering the programme are all tracked. This also includes the use of various 'value management' techniques such as Earned Value Analysis (EVA) to track, in 'real-time', the progress against plan and actual spend;

- Infrastructure: Allocation of resources influences the cost and success of the programme. The PMO monitors overall and project specific resource usage and utilises appropriate metrics to track and control the resource pool; and

- Planning: Each project manager creates a plan which fits in with the wider plan of the Programme itself. This Programme Plan is managed by the PMO and documents the interdependencies between the constituent projects and ensures focus on risk areas within the plan which include, but are not limited to: critical path analysis, dependency management, re-baselining etc