The Art of Project Management

1.4. Program and project management at Microsoft

Microsoft had a problem in the late 1980s regarding how to coordinate engineering efforts with the marketing and business side of each division (some might say this is still a problem for Microsoft and many other companies). A wise man named Jabe Blumenthal realized that there could be a special job where an individual would be involved with these two functions, playing a role of both leadership and coordination. He'd be involved in the project from day one of planning, all the way through the last day of testing. It had to be someone who was at least technical enough to work with and earn the respect of programmers, but also someone who had talents and interests for broader participation in how products were made.

For this role to work, he'd have to enjoy spending his days performing tasks as varied as writing specifications, reviewing marketing plans, generating project schedules, leading teams, doing strategic planning, running bug/defect triage, cultivating team morale, and doing anything else that needed to be done that no one else was doing (well). This new role at Microsoft was called program manager. Not everyone on the team would report directly to him, but the program manager would be granted significant authority to lead and drive the project. (In management theory, this is roughly the idea of a matrix organization,(5) where there are two lines of reporting structure for individuals: one based on function and the other ...