— IT Program Manager

Role Purpose The IT Program Manager is the business-side owner for coordinating and driving technology-enabled change across the organization.

The role exists to ensure that business objectives are translated into clearly scoped IT projects, that business decisions are made when required, that implementation partners receive timely direction, and that projects collectively deliver the intended business outcomes.

The IT Program Manager does not replace business owners, functional heads, project teams, or technology partners. The role provides the management discipline that connects them.

For small and medium businesses, the role is expected to work closely with business leadership and external/internal IT delivery teams and to manage multiple related projects as a coherent program.

Core Responsibilities

1. Program Definition and Management

•Understand the business objectives driving technology investment.

•Group related IT projects into coherent programs.

•Establish priorities and sequencing across projects.

•Identify dependencies between projects, business functions, technology components, vendors, and key personnel.

•Track whether the overall program is producing the intended business outcome rather than merely completing individual projects.

•Escalate cross-project risks, conflicts, resource constraints, and business decisions.

2. Project Scope and Context

Each project represents a defined release set of business activities.

The IT Program Manager will:

•establish and maintain the controlled Project Context;

•understand the business activities included in project scope;

•identify the business functions and owners affected by the project;

•confirm what is in scope and out of scope;

- maintain the intended business outcome and acceptance expectations;
- understand the technology systems, vendors, interfaces, and dependencies involved;
- maintain key commercial commitments, assumptions, milestones, and responsibilities.

3. Project Review and Issue Management

- Conduct structured reviews of active projects.
- Gather the current situation from business owners, delivery teams, and IT partners.
- Reconcile current circumstances against the approved Project Context.
- Identify:

o unresolved issues;

o business decisions required;

o actions required;

o changed assumptions;

o scope-change indicators;

o dependency failures;

o milestone risks;

o commercial implications;

o acceptance concerns.

- Assign or obtain clear ownership and target resolution for issues.
- Escalate matters requiring management intervention.
- Ensure resolved issues and decisions are reflected in the controlled Project

Context.

4. Activity-Level Delivery Governance The Activity is the basic unit of implementation and delivery management.

For Activities under development or enhancement, the IT Program Manager should understand and track progress through the standard delivery progression:

Data items identified → Preview completed → Business rules identified → Backend completed → Frontend integrated → Development testing completed → User accepted →

Released The Program Manager will:

- establish which Activities form each Project/Release Set;
- know the delivery state of each Activity;
- identify what is preventing an Activity from moving to the next stage;
- ensure business participation occurs at the required points;
- ensure user acceptance is explicit before release;




- ensure released Activities transition into maintenance.

The role does not require the Program Manager to perform the technical design or development work personally, but the person must understand the delivery lifecycle sufficiently to challenge status, identify gaps, and drive closure.

5. Business Decision Management A major responsibility of the role is ensuring that projects are not delayed because the business has failed to make decisions.

The IT Program Manager will:

- identify decisions needed from business stakeholders;
- determine the appropriate decision-maker;
- establish the business context and consequences of each decision;
- facilitate timely resolution;
- record significant decisions and assumptions;
- ensure delivery teams understand the resulting direction;
- escalate unresolved decisions where appropriate.

6. IT Partner and Vendor Management

- Act as the primary business-side coordination point for technology partners where appropriate.
- Review commitments and delivery status against agreed scope.
- Separate genuine scope additions from completion of already committed work.
- Challenge unclear or percentage-based status reporting using Activity-level delivery evidence.
- Ensure vendor dependencies on the business are visible and acted upon.
- Review commercial impact of enhancements, additional work, delays, or scope changes.
- Support management in assessing vendor performance and delivery throughput.

7. Commercial and Productivity Management The organisation manages technology effort across categories such as:

- new Activity development;
- Activity enhancement;
- maintenance of released Activities;
- general IT productivity / throughput.

The IT Program Manager should be able to:
- relate expenditure and effort to actual Activities and work performed;
- distinguish development, enhancement, maintenance, and general IT work;
- monitor whether contracted capacity is being productively consumed;
- identify recurring causes of low throughput;
- challenge unexplained effort or commercial variation;
- provide management with a clear view of technology delivery productivity.

8. Business Acceptance and Release

- Ensure appropriate business users participate in preview and validation.
- Ensure required business rules are resolved before implementation proceeds.
- Coordinate user acceptance.
- Verify that acceptance issues are resolved or consciously accepted.
- Support release/go-live decisions.
- Confirm that released Activities transition into ongoing maintenance ownership.

Experience Required

Essential Experience

Ideally 8–15 years of overall qualified experience, including significant responsibility in business-facing technology delivery.

The candidate should have hands-on experience in several of the following:

- managing enterprise or mid-market business application projects;
- coordinating multiple simultaneous IT projects;
- working directly with business heads, functional managers, and senior management;
- managing external software development partners, system integrators, or technology vendors;
- translating business needs into manageable implementation scope;




- project and program governance;
- issue, decision, dependency, and escalation management;
- software development and implementation lifecycles;
- user acceptance and production rollout;
- commercial/vendor management;
- managing enhancements and application maintenance following implementation.

Preferred Background

Strong candidates may come from backgrounds such as:

- business-side IT program/project management;
- ERP or enterprise application implementation;
- technology consulting;
- system integration program management;
- business transformation;
- application delivery management;
- product/application management in a business information systems environment.

Experience working with small or medium businesses is particularly valuable because the role requires pragmatism, direct interaction with senior business leaders, and the ability to operate without large enterprise PMO structures.

Required Understanding of Technology The role is not intended to be a software developer or solution architect.

However, the candidate should be sufficiently technology-literate to understand and discuss:

- frontend and backend application development;
- application data and business rules;
- APIs and system integrations;
- application environments and releases;
- testing and user acceptance;
- application support and maintenance;
- cloud/on-premise application environments at a conceptual level;
- dependencies between business applications.

The person should be capable of asking technically meaningful questions and recognising when a technical explanation does not adequately address the business issue.

Business Skills Required The candidate should demonstrate strong ability in:

- structured problem solving;
- facilitation;
- stakeholder management;
- decision framing;
- prioritisation;
- written and verbal communication;
- issue analysis;
- follow-through and closure;
- commercial judgement;
- negotiation;
- handling disagreement between business and IT teams;
- communicating technology issues in business language.

Personal Characteristics The role requires someone who:

- is comfortable taking ownership without taking over other people's responsibilities;
- persistently drives unresolved matters to closure;
- is able to challenge both business teams and IT partners constructively;
- distinguishes facts, assumptions, decisions, actions, and opinions;
- works comfortably with incomplete information;
- can move between detailed project issues and overall business objectives;
- avoids unnecessary bureaucracy;
- creates structure in environments where formal project governance may be limited;
- earns credibility with both business executives and technology professionals.

Measures of Success

Success should not primarily be measured by the number of meetings conducted or status reports produced.

The role should be judged by outcomes such as:

- business decisions are obtained when required;
- projects are not unnecessarily blocked by business-side inaction;
- project scope remains clear;
- issues are surfaced early and resolved;
- technology partners have clear direction;
- Activity-level delivery progress is transparent;
- scope changes and commercial implications are visible;
- Projects/Release Sets reach business acceptance and release;
- related projects remain aligned with the overall Program objective;
- management has a reliable understanding of IT delivery performance and productivity.

📌 Information Technology Program Manager (Chennai)
🏢 SRINIDHI INVESTMENT ADVISORS
📍 Chennai