Navigating Challenges in Program Management

Mario Gerard: Hello, and welcome to the TPM podcast with your post Mario Gerard. This is going be a podcast with Rhea. Rhea and I worked together at OCI running large scale programs. We’ve split this into a three-part series, and we’re primarily focusing on how we run large scale programs at tech organizations. So, stay tuned and listen in and definitely check out all the three parts to the series.

And so, this is Rhea’s co expertise, and this is what I’ve been doing as well for the last four years at the Oracle cloud infrastructure team. It’s definitely a very unique type of a role, unique type of people who get involved in running large scale programs. And generally, there aren’t many large-scale programs which are run within organizations, right?

So, I’m going to ask Rhea some questions and I’ll probably add to that as well. So, the first primary question for our listeners Rhea, what is a large-scale program? How do you define a large-scale program?

Rhea Frondozo: So typically, I’d say that a large-scale program is a program that spans multiple organizations. So, you’re looking at a program that maybe ranges from hundreds to thousands of developers or engineers, all working towards a very complex goal.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. I just feel that that needs to kind of sink in, right? So, the programs they’ve run, like we’ve had to move like 200 teams, which takes two years. If you calculate the manpower that’s required to do some of these initiatives. There are literally thousands or tens of thousands of manners of work. And so that’s like so complex. Do you think about it?

Rhea Frondozo: Yeah, I would say when you frame it that way, and you think about the complexity that comes with a large program, it may be the case that as a TPM, you’re interacting with a core set of stakeholders. Maybe it’s like 20 to 30 core stakeholders, but the multiplier under that for how many people that they are working with, how much direction that they are giving to an entire organization, it can be pretty mind blowing to know that you’re trying to move a ship that has so many people all trying to row in the same direction. It’s pretty incredible. Once you see the amount of effort that that takes.

Mario Gerard: And this is I think, where we also differentiate depth TPMS versus breadth TPMS, you want to speak of little bit about that?

Rhea Frondozo: Yeah. So, you know, as you mentioned, these large-scale programs are often run by a breadth TPM because these are going to be the TPMS who work across multiple organizations. They’re going to have maybe pocs that point of context that they interact with across maybe functional different organizations and teams.

Whereas a depth TPM, they’re going to go deep in a particular organization or team scope of ownership. And so, they’re going to maybe work more directly with the engineers on a single team and understand their problem space much more closely. Whereas the breadth TPM is going to rely on functional area owners to be the subject matter experts in that space. But they’re the ones pulling these different functions together to solve a much larger, bigger picture problem.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. And if you want to read more about the depth versus breadth TPMS, I’ve written a good blog post about it with my experience working at OCI. So, you should definitely go check that out. So, coming back to the skills required as a TPM, what do you think are the main skills that a TPM needs to have to run this kind of large-scale initiatives? Because I feel like the breadth TPMS definitely have a different type of problem that they’re dealing with than a depth TPM, right?

Rhea Frondozo: Yes. So, I would say first and foremost, when you’re dealing with these large skill programs, a breath TPM absolutely must have excellent communication skills. They must be crisp. They must be clear. They must be concise. If you think about the levels of communication that are required for a breath TPM. A lot of times you’re dealing with very complex programs that are being watched by the highest levels of executive leadership within an organization. So, you have to be able to communicate very crisply and concise to them.

You also are going to be working across a lot of different problem spaces and having to work across many other leaders or engineers and being able to get to the point quickly of what you need to solve by when and how is also really important. And so, communication is definitely key to your success and running a large program.

So next I would say is a long in the lines of communicating, but your ability to define a clear objective and scope a large program is going to be very, very complex. And if you don’t have the right objective laid out for all of these people to follow, it’s going to be very difficult to make sure that everybody’s running in the right direction. And so being able to define a clear objective and scope ends up, you know, being like we said before, a good measurement of whether or not you’re solving the right problem.

Mario Gerard: And I think to add to that, right, I think why that’s super important is every stakeholder who comes to your table, who’s part of your large-scale program has a different function at times. You might have security, you might have operations, you might have 10 different teams providing 10 different pillars of software. So, everybody has a different output they’re going to generate, right?

And your problem definition, and your objective needs to be super clear because everybody’s going to interpret it kind of differently from the functional perspective. And that’s why you’re going to keep re recreating and retelling your story. You are retelling your objective multiple different times, but the people are consuming it at translating into what they each need to do.

Rhea Frondozo: Right, right. Great point.

Mario Gerard: So, what are the other skills you think are kind of important?

Rhea Frondozo: So, you know, I think another one that we had touched on earlier is just your ability to problem solve in an ambiguous or unfamiliar situation. When you have a large-scale program, a lot of times you don’t know what’s coming, you don’t know what kind of problems you’re going to run into. You can try to plan as much as you want, but there are so many variables that come with running a large-scale program that it’s very difficult to predict what can go wrong.

Mario Gerard: Or what problem you going to encounter tomorrow? You wouldn’t even know that.

Rhea Frondozo: Right. Right. And so, when it comes down to it, there’s always going to be these curve balls that get thrown at you and you can prepare for as many that you think you may know, but it’s hard to predict. And so, knowing how to deal in real time with a problem at hand is very, very important.

Mario Gerard: So, we spoke with three skills, communication, the ability to define clear problems and scope and the problem-solving skill and the being able to deal with ambiguity. So why are these like so important in the large-scale program?

Rhea Frondozo: So, if you can imagine being a TPM, it’s like being the quarterback of your program, you you’re the one calling the plays, which ultimately makes you the key player responsible for determining the success or the failure of the program.

Mario Gerard: To recreate that, right? So, you are calling the shots most of the time. You are the person giving direction of what needs to be done, how they need to be done or what direction they need to take. So, [07:57 inaudible] program, which we run, right. There are so many decisions, a TPM who’s running a breath program takes on a daily, if not a weekly basis. They might have to go and recheck that with somebody. But there’s so many decisions, so many directions he, or she’s giving them.

Rhea Frondozo: Right. Right. A lot of times what happens is when you are in a breath TPM role, your job is to unblock issues that come up. So, you work on this plan, you come up with what you think is going to work. And then day after day, something goes wrong. And it’s your job to figure out, how do you call an audible on what you should do instead, or what you should do differently or who you need to pull in. It’s really your job to take the lead role in not only determining what needs to be accomplished and bringing all the people to do it, but also figuring out what happens when everything goes wrong, and it doesn’t pan out as you expected.

And so, the reality is if you aren’t able to communicate crisply and clearly you can’t leave the team by setting a clear objective and you can’t help unblocking obstacles when you game plans are required. And if you can’t do these, then chances are you won’t be successful in running your program.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. I think we have a question later on about this, but I was doing this, say that a lot of times, why things go wrong or why there’s so much ambiguity and why there are new problem discount on a daily basis, or a weekly basis is because most of the times when, at least the program we run, right.

They’ve never been done before. These are brand new initiatives, which are kind of game changing. Like no man has traveled down this road before. Nobody’s gone there. So, it’s like discovering space. You don’t know what you’re going to hit every day is an adventure. And you got to just take it as it comes, and you got to be able to deal with that.

Rhea Frondozo: Right. So, a lot of times, you know, I think of it, like if you are, let’s bring it back to the team analogy. If you’re working on a project that you’ve never worked on before or a program that you’ve never seen before, it’s like playing a team that you’ve never played. You haven’t had a chance to scout out the challenges that they’re going to bring you are, you haven’t had a chance to see how they operate. And so instead you’re learning as you go.

And so, every day becomes a challenge. And that at it’s some kind of new thing that you didn’t expect to come, and you’ve got to figure it out, you know, on the spot.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. Coming back. So how does a TPM kickoffs a large program like this? What’s your go to playbook?

Rhea Frondozo: So, one of the biggest things that is really required and kicking off a large-scale program is getting buy on the problem statement and program scope from an executive sponsor. If you can’t clearly articulate the problem statement and you can’t define the program scope, there’s no way that you’re going to get buy-in from anybody, let alone your executive sponsor.

But once you’re able to get an executive sponsor, then you can get buy-in from the rest of the key stakeholders. Now, what happens typically is you have stakeholders then that nominate pocs or points of contact who end up working on the program themselves. And then you end up doing stakeholder kickoff meetings to make sure that you get everybody on the same page with what the program scope is, what you’re trying to accomplish and what everybody’s kind of roles and responsibilities are in the program.

If you don’t have the appropriate buy-in on the prioritization at the executive levels, then what happens is that you end up continuously fighting an uphill battle, trying to get the pocs to work with you on any kind of program initial often, because there ends up being competing priorities that they will choose over yours.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Coming back to the question on execute sponsor, right. What do you think is the execute sponsor’s role? What do you expect from an execute sponsor?

Rhea Frondozo: So, I expect the executive sponsor to really understand the problem statement of what we’re trying to solve and really put their weight behind why we are solving this. And if there ends up being a question of priority or a criticality for the project that we’re working on, they’re ones to stand up and essentially back you on the asks that you may have, it could be from the perspective of resources that you need to work on a program.

Mario Gerard: It could be because these resources are in other teams. So visually what I’m trying to see is think about an executive sponsor. They have five other counterparts, Or six other counterparts. So, this executive sponsor now needs five of his colleagues who have five different functional areas that they’re responsible for to give you X number of resources from every team.

Some teams might give you like 50 people. Some things might give you a hundred people. Some teams might just give you four or five, but that executive sponsor now needs to go and convince his fellow colleagues That he or she needs all these people from their teams. Probably these people already have a roadmap they assigned up to deliver. Or features or product work. But now they need to be re-tasked to go and solve this particular problem.

Rhea Frondozo: Right. Right. So, this is where your job to inform your executive sponsor on the importance of the initiative, to give them the ammunition that they need to go make those asks to other teams becomes so important.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. It also helps if the program, the large program that you are working on is a goal for your senior executive or your executive sponsor. Ideally that is the number one deliverable.

Rhea Frondozo: If their success is tied to this program, then typically it means you’re going to get whatever help you need. Yeah. For them to be successful means the program will be successful.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. So generally, if you think about a senior executive, they probably are delivering like maybe four or five things every quarter or every six months. And if your program is part of, one of your primary goals, it becomes much easier to drive that initiative. At Amazon They have SVP goals. Is this project or program that you’re going to work on? Is it part of an SVP goal? So, SVP might have like 3000 people or 2000 people around with them.

And if this particular large-scale program has a backing of a senior execute, they are closely watching it, then everything, all the cogs like fitted together and magically work. Otherwise, it’s very hard to get all these teams to row at the same time to that cadence.

Rhea Frondozo: Exactly. We have a similar thing at Salesforce. They call it V2 moms.

Mario Gerard: What is it again?

Rhea Frondozo: V2 moms, where you have your method and your obstacles and your measurements That are required for completing whatever goals that you sign up for. And you’re exactly right. That if you get your program or your project on, you know, an executives V2 mom, it means that they are going, going to be watching the success or failure of that project and whatever help that you need for that to be successful, they are going to back you on that.

And so, a lot of times it means that they’re going to ask that another peer of theirs yeah. Have the same goal on their V2 mom. Because we want to be able to hold them accountable for the work that is needed for this program to be successful. So very, very similar in nature in terms of the hierarchy [15:37 inaudible].

Mario Gerard: Yeah. And it’s very interesting how this works, right? Because sometimes the vice president, the executive driving this might not actually be spending a lot of resources to deliver that objective. The resources are coming from his or her peers. And it’s fascinating if you think about it right. Or how this large program kind of operates and works.

Rhea Frondozo: Right. So, what we call that Salesforce actually is some of the goals that we have are sometimes what we call informing V2 mom goals, where we are informing other teams of this, what we need from them. And other times you have these executing V2 Mons where you’re actually executing on this work. That has been given to you from another V2 mom That was the informing V two mom.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. It’s fascinating. So let me ask you another question. So why are these large, scaled programs like why they important to an organization?

Rhea Frondozo: So typically, programs that are critical to the business are the ones that require the most investment. And it means that a large-scale investment across multiple teams is really going to determine the success or failure of the program and whether or not this program succeeds ultimately impacts the business’s bottom line.  And so, you’re going to end up looking at projects that have a huge impact to the bottom line as your kind of large-scale critical projects that need to be funded.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. As you said, right. This is like moving a large ship. This needs to be so many pieces that kind of come together. One of the things which I can think of was the programs, which we first originally worked on, which Rhea and I worked on at OCI was to bring every single Oracle SAS product onto the newly built cloud and infrastructure platform.

So, Oracle has said 200 plus SAS products. And the goal was to bring every single product onto this platform, which when we are spinning up, like 200 different teams are going to go and work on something and they need to move from an existing data center to the new data center. So just think about the sheer scope of that work and how many teams it kind of spans. But at the end of the day, that particular initiative brings in a lot of revenue or a lot of car savings for the entire organization, probably like billions of dollars of cost saving over like 10-year period.

And that is why this kind of large-scale programs are like so important to organizations. They’re like critical. They’re almost like liberalized situations or game changing in the Marketplace. That’s why it’s so critical that these large programs have to be run properly. And that’s why they have the executive back.

Rhea Frondozo: Right. So, another example that I would give is in addition to the project that you and I worked on about moving the SAS products to OCI, a lot of times there are, when you talk about game changers, big business opportunities that can change a company,

Mario Gerard: Bottom line revenue.

Rhea Frondozo: Bottom line. And so, some of the ones that I had worked on really came from the potential to win big government bids. These are bids that are worth, you know, multi-billion dollars. And the ability to not only participate in responding to the bid is one thing. But winning the bid itself is where that game changing happens.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. And we could spend millions of dollars to win that multibillion-dollar engagement.

Rhea Frondozo: Right. And that’s exactly what we did, right. I mean, these are not small feats to try and to win a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. You’re talking about millions of a dollar investment and not only infrastructure and hardware and the engine engineering that’s required and the people that are needed to run these products. It’s a massive Orgwide initiative to be able to compete for such a bid.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. And that’s why they’re kind of so important and there’s so many eyes on it. I think we go into a little bit more detail later on about that. What are the top things you think we need to keep in mind when running this kind of large-scale initiatives or programs as TPMs?

Rhea Frondozo: Gotcha. One of the things that comes top of mind goes back to communication, right? Being able to communicate effectively at all levels, whether it’s to highlight risks or issues or the progress to executives, or whether your problem solving with engineers or pulling in engineering leaders and managers to help with prioritization, you have to be able to do it all and you have to be able to do it all effectively through good communication.

Mario Gerard: And I think that’s like, we can’t reiterate that point because as a large scale TPM, I think the primary job in running this large-scale program is communication. The number of meetings you are in per day, you’re generally giving people, I wouldn’t say a direction you’re giving people direction. You’re telling people what to do. You’re understanding problems.

You’re re communicating that problem to somebody else. You’re trying to problem solve that with 10 other teams. So, communicating articulating the ability to understand is so crucial and giving the right level of importance of [20:58 inaudible] type of problem. So, it’s really, really crucial that you have good verbal communication, good written communication. You’re able to produce good reports, all of those things.

Rhea Frondozo: Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. I think, you know, something else to keep in mind when you’re running these large programs outside of just, you know, the communication is, you know, as we mentioned, when you run a large complex problem, you always have to expect that something is going to go wrong. I’ve never seen a program, especially a large one run so smoothly where nothing goes wrong.

Mario Gerard: How many program problems you general you had if you think about a month.

Rhea Frondozo: I think about it in a day, every day, I’m dealing with multiple problems.

Mario Gerard: It’s just like crazy number of problems that you have to go solve.

Rhea Frondozo: The more complex the program, the more problem ones that you’ll have. And what ends up happening is that the value add that you bring as a TPM is your ability to work through these issues, by collaborating with your stakeholders and coming up with the mitigation strategies that are needed to get these programs back on track.

Mario Gerard: And I can think of another one is these problems Shouldn’t phase you out. They shouldn’t take away the steam that you have. You have to have that steam every time you hear about a new problem, that you’re going to take it out and you’re going to go and solve for it.

Rhea Frondozo: Yeah. Because at the end of the day, like it’s the nature of the beast and your job really is to problem solve. And so, you create plan as a starting point, but all that is a starting point. And every day, you know, these problems will take you in a different direction and you have to figure out how do you keep course correcting to get to your end game. And there is no straight-line path that I’ve ever seen a program take.

So being able to be flexible, to respond to issues that arise to be creative and how you solve problems to know when to pull in the right people. Cause a lot of times you’re not solving these problems by yourself. You have to know who to bring in and when to escalate for when you need help.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. Why do you think there are so many problems Generally?

Rhea Frondozo: I think it’s because you know, like we mentioned there is, no two programs are the same. And so, no matter how much planning that you think that you do for one program, the variables will always change. You know, you’re never going to know if you’re going to have somebody get sick or quit and that’s a critical resource to your project. Or maybe there are things that you didn’t plan for like a pandemic that affects your supply chain and limits your ability to get resources on time. Or maybe there’s this crazy technical challenge that nobody’s ever solved before.

And you think you have a plan, but when you try it, you realize it doesn’t work and you need to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new game plan. I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of times what happens is that you’re venturing into unchartered territory and it’s the kind of scenario where you end up having to try, try and try again until you get it right.

Mario Gerard: And this is also, I think when we, as TPMS need to be okay with these types of small failures and executives are very understanding. Actually, if you think about it, right, it’s just that you have to communicate why this came about, why we didn’t see this and what we are doing and if they have any suggestions or ideas to go and [24:22 inaudible].

Rhea Frondozo:  Actually, you know, you bring up a great point. I once had a TPM tell me that she was really worried that she was going to be seen as a failure because her project kept getting delayed or kept getting moved out. And what I told her is there is no project that I expect that the reality is we’ll finish as you expected on time. And what I do expect is that your job is to communicate when things are going wrong, communicate what our options are, communicate what challenges you’re facing and what help you need and then reset expectations on a path forward.

And so, if you can do that, then that to me is a measure of success. If what you do though, is wait till the very end and then say you failed and you didn’t come in time. That to me is a failure to communicate, which is one of the key things that we said earlier. You have to be able to communicate what’s happening with your program. And even if it means the program or timelines change, that’s okay. As long as you’re resetting expectations.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. And I think you mentioned a very, very important thing, which I was just thinking through that you have to communicate that really soon. If you know about a problem today, ideally your executive knows about depending on the size of the problem, depending on the impact of the problem, ideally, your executive knows about that by four o’clock today, right?

Like you need to be able to articulate, communicate that and let them know so that they also are thinking about the problem. They also are trying to vett whether the direction or the route we are taking is the right route, For the program itself. So not sitting on it and sweeping it under the rug. I think you got to have the courage

Rhea Frondozo: And the judgment. I think one of the things, the value add that you bring is your judgment to a situation and an executive isn’t going to be working in the trenches with you. So, they’re relying on your judgment to know what issues are real things that they need to worry about. Versus things that you guys can handle on a micro level. Right.

And so being able to identify what are real risks to your program that need help by making the right judgment call really is what an executive is relying on you for.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. And keeping them informed about these kinds of things as early as Possible, but not somebody else telling them, hey, I heard that this is going wrong, you know about this, right? So, it’s that judgment and the courage that you have probably to bring it up and to go to them, ideally with both solutions and a very clear problem statement and solutions to their problem, statement of your, how you’re going about handling that situation.

Rhea Frondozo: Exactly. And I will say, and even just in my current role, I’ve been in situations where the amount of confidence that your executive will have in you is going to be much higher. If they see that you come to them with problems that have arisen, as well as, you know, potential solutions that you’ve thought through for their input, you know, for what is it that they recommend or what are you recommending them to do versus them hearing from other teams that the project is going awry. But you keep saying that the project is green and on track.

So, it definitely is in your best interest to be able to articulate ahead of time, what’s going wrong, Why and what are you doing about it? Then assume that if you just say the project is green and think that you’ll figure it out as you go without keeping your executive informed, that ends up not biting you later.

Mario Gerard: Yeah. I remember sitting through one of the executive meetings where somebody said are these all watermelons where all of these are green on the outside, but they’re all steaming red inside. How are you telling me all this is green while I keep hearing from everybody else that these are so much in bad shape. Why are you not surfacing this out?

Rhea Frondozo: Right. Right. Exactly. That’s exactly what you don’t want to do.

Mario Gerard: And that my friends is the end of part one of the three-part series on how we run large programs, a conversation with Rhea, definitely check out part two and three. I’ll see you on the other side. Bye. Bye.