Program approach for increased engagement
Cloud Campus team improved study experience for online learners. Our team grew quicky as online was a strategic area for the university. Within a year, we had 40+ projects in flight, most of them were smaller/shorter step change efforts, nevertheless, complex with stakeholders across the organisation.
Why a new approach
Despite a number of exciting projects underway, we experienced silo effect. Different groups within the team had little cross collaboration. Work distribution was uneven. With bigger team, it was clear we had to change our way of working. We had to ensure we had the right methods to deliver our plan.
My involvement
I took initiative to review the plan with team and find opportunities for better synergy. We also needed some forward planning so workloads were more evenly spread. I proposed structuring the team plan into seven programs - six in response to the organisational strategy and one internal to enable and empower the team.
- Program objectives aligned to organisational strategy
- Projects with shared objectves gathered into programs to promote better synergies
- New Program Lead role created in the team, to be nominated for each program
- Program level thinking embedded by empowering program teams to take ownership
- Program outcomes were were agreed upon and defined as milestones on a transparent timeline
Program Lead role expectations
Program Lead was responsible to ensure they provide leadership within their program to achieve the outcomes. They will be doing so taking a holistic view.
Program Lead was a leadership role. It was additional to normal day to day roles. The objective of calling out leadership at program level was to empower program teams, promote visibility and synergies of related efforts across the team and to put emphasis on the outcomes from coherent projects.
Program Lead role was expected to:
- Organise and lead progress review meetings
- Encourage focus on delivering outcomes
- Promote synergy and visibility across team
- Ensure goals are met in taget areas such as Learner Engagement Scale (LES)
- Forecast and plan ahead
- Analyse program risks and help remove blocks
- Make program communications easy and transparent
- Represent program with stakeholders
Benefits of the new approach
Mostly, senior staff within the team were nominated as Program Leads. They took it with a sense of prosperity. It provided a pathway to future career progression.
It also resulted in a more interconnected teams. Someone might be leading a program whilst be part of a project team in another program. This structure created highly intertwined teams, like yarns.
The approach worked well at fixing the problems we were observing especially silos, uneven workloads, unclear impact and inconsistent work pipelines.
