Choose the Best Program Management Tools for Transformation Projects

Explore essential program management tools and methodologies for transformation projects. Learn how to select and implement the right solutions for your organization’s needs.

In brief:

• Strategic alignment and resource optimization are core benefits of using the right program management tools, especially in complex transformation projects.
• Combine traditional, collaborative, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools for smoother transitions and stronger stakeholder buy-in.
• A structured implementation road map — with milestones, training, and change management — ensures successful adoption and future scalability.
• Tool selection should balance capability and return on investment (ROI), considering integration needs, long-term scalability, and total cost of ownership.
• Centric Consulting helped automate 95 percent of a public organization’s invoicing process by using program management best practices and integration tools.

For your transformation project to succeed, you need the right program management tools and methodologies. These solutions streamline decision-making and ensure alignment with strategic initiatives.

Transformations are often very complex because they deal with different kinds of data, sources, targets, storage mechanisms, and a range of cloud-based services. That’s why the right tools matter: They help you succeed by organizing and streamlining your decision-making and implementation processes.

Transformation tools are designed to support specific program management methodologies. Transformation frameworks are often built into their logic and preset workflows, saving time and effort because you don’t need to develop tools and systems from scratch.

Instead, you can use existing tools like traditional project management software, collaboration platforms, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions, and analytics tools. Often, by combining several tools, you can enhance adoption and effectiveness.

A strategic implementation road map with a phased approach, thoughtful change management, and comprehensive training sets you up for success. It allows organizations to select tools that match their size, complexity and scalability requirements.

Let’s look at some common program management tools and methodologies.

Program Management Tools and Methodologies

You have various tools and methodologies at your disposal to enable robust program management (PM) for transformations and implementations. This means you don’t have to build your approach from the ground up.

In many cases, combining two or more of the following tools and methodologies yields a smoother transformation and enhances buy-in.

PM Tools

• Traditional project management software is often a transformation’s foundation because it comes with tools for strategic planning, scheduling tasks, and tracking each initiative.
• Collaboration and communication tools enable more seamless workflows between disparate teams and individuals. Organizations also use them to tear down silos that can isolate important data from those who need it.
• AI-powered program management solutions provide access to automated predictive analytics and resource optimization tools. Some also use AI for risk assessment, making data-driven decisions easier.
• Analytics and reporting tools empower even those without a lot of analytics or Excel experience to create compelling, actionable reports.

Project Management Methodologies

• PMI’s Program Management Standard provides guidelines and best practices for managing programs. Developed by the Project Management Institute (PMI), it emphasizes governance, integration and stakeholder management.
• Agile Program Management and Agile methodologies can be scaled to manage programs, focusing on iterative development, flexibility and continuous improvement. One common framework is SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework).
• Lean Program Management and Lean principles maximize value and minimize waste across the program. This approach is particularly effective in environments that demand efficiency and continuous improvement.
• Six Sigma and Six Sigma methodologies can be applied to program management to improve quality and reduce variability. It uses data-driven techniques to identify and eliminate defects in processes.
• PRINCE2 for Programs can be adapted for program management to provide a structured approach with defined roles, responsibilities, and processes.

Selecting and Combining Methodologies

Which of these methodologies makes the most sense to you? It all depends on your:

• Transformation Scope: Enterprisewide versus department-specific changes
• Organizational Culture: Hierarchical versus collaborative environments
• Time Constraints: Speed versus thoroughness requirements
• Risk Tolerance: Innovation appetite versus stability needs

For example, if you need to transform quickly because of an urgent market disruption, you might start with stakeholder-centric change management. That will allow you to know quickly which parts of your organization will be affected by the changes. You can then take a phased-in approach that will work better because you are only phasing in the most affected employees.

In contrast, if your transformation is more targeted to long-term goals, you can combine value-stream and across-the-fence (ATF) methodologies to build new processes while instilling a continuous improvement mindset in your organization.

The bottom line: You’re significantly more likely to succeed if you select and tailor program management methodologies to your specific transformation needs. The right approach transforms abstract strategic goals into tangible business results.

Strategic Implementation Road Map to Create the PM Ecosystem

Your strategic implementation road map gives you a systematic approach with measurable goals. This makes your implementation easier to monitor and replicate in the future.

To create a successful implementation road map, you should:

1. Develop an Implementation Strategy

Your implementation strategy should use a phased approach as you deploy new tools and assess the risks involved and how to mitigate them.

My colleague and project management office (PMO) lead Rick Morris says this involves asking questions such as, “What are the initiatives, what are the timeline expectations, and which resources will we need?”

Morris also says it’s important to establish milestones for an effective transformation road map instead of trying to tackle all goals at once.

2. Approach Change Management Compassionately

Your change management approach should center engaging with stakeholders and compassionately managing resistance. Focus on who the change is going to impact and how to communicate with and support those stakeholders to help them adjust and succeed after implementation.

3. Build Training and Adoption Strategies

With the right training system, you can build internal capabilities that will allow you to use your new tools more effectively.

Training empowers adoption because it ensures stakeholders know how to use your transformation to better meet their professional objectives, whether that involves small tasks or complex, involved processes. This is why it’s important to monitor and track training progress with success metrics to quantify how well it’s working.

Gather feedback from trainees about the training’s effectiveness. This will help you better understand how your training is impacting those who need it most.

Select the Right PM Tools for Your Organization

When choosing the right PM tool, consider your organization’s size and complexity. This determines how sophisticated your program management and strategic planning tools should be.

Also consider your scalability requirements. A relatively simple program management tool may suffice for some organizations because it’s only needed for a limited, modest commission. But many organizations need a project management tool that can adapt as the company evolves and grows. This is especially true because growth often necessitates further transformations.

For some companies, transformation involves unifying data from different operational areas, so they need a program management tool that supports data integration. Even though an organization is undergoing transformation, it may still want to maintain its current enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.

By choosing a program management tool that integrates data with their solution, an organization can build a more comprehensive ecosystem. For example, both monday.com and Asana can incorporate data from customer relationship management (CRM) and automation platforms.

Do a cost-benefit analysis to help you choose the right program management tool. Many strategic project planning tools can work well, but at times, they can be so expensive to run that their overall return on investment (ROI) negates their value.

For example, a tool may have a low monthly subscription fee, but its total cost of ownership is extremely high because it requires extensive training to get staff up to speed on how to use it.

By establishing value assessment metrics, you can compare the ROI of different strategic planning tools. Your value assessment metrics may include:

• How much time will the tool save your team in the long run
• How well it improves your bottom line. For instance, some tools can increase the number of billable hours for program management staff because they save them a lot of time on administrative tasks.
• How the tool lowers project costs by helping you find more efficient ways of getting things done

Centric Consulting has successfully managed programs using these and other tools for years. A recent example illustrates the effectiveness of a well-designed approach.

Enabling a Smooth Transformation for an Airline Settlement Company: A Real-Life Example

The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), which settles airline ticket transactions through travel agencies, needed to transform their business to meet the demands of the digital age.

Specifically, the company’s internal infrastructure — including their settlement engine and data storage system — hampered employees’ ability to collaborate, slowed down the settlement process, and reduced ARC’s ability to generate revenue from their data.

Our technical experts mapped the company’s new IT infrastructure and implemented modern customer reporting tools, business intelligence applications, and other digital products to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Meanwhile, other Centric team members began working on another critical aspect of any transformation project: culture and change management.

In fact, ARC’s leaders acknowledged the importance of culture to their success by calling the “technical transformation” effort a “business transformation” initiative instead.

As part of our culture work, we helped ARC’s leaders and their organizational change management office instill a culture of agility at the company. We also helped them establish milestones and metrics that held Centric as accountable as the employees. This built trust within the organization and laid the foundation for training employees in the new technology and processes.

Our work enabled ARC to begin completing important objectives, such as building custom reports for customers, using data to evaluate opportunities more quickly, and meeting and exceeding customer expectations.

Build Your Program Management Capability

Building your program management often starts with your business’s higher-level goals, whether you use a waterfall or Agile management approach.

Senior manager Jayson Castillo says, “Many companies want to step up their competitive advantage. They may want greater business agility. So we’ve got to pivot. We must focus the transformation project on where they need to be.”

In these situations, the goal is about changing the organization.

“It may be structure-related, but it’s really from an operational nature, so we need to drastically do something different,” Castillo says.

For many companies, the size of the undertaking can be overwhelming, so it helps to systematically scaffold the process. One element of your scaffolding framework may involve creating a program management Center of Excellence (CoE) that focuses on structure and governance, which determines who does what and when, then assigns accountability.

You should also build a continuous improvement framework with feedback and implementation loops. This allows you to constantly find ways to make the system more effective and efficient.

Many successful organizations choose to bring in a third party with a program management certification, often because it saves them time and resources. This is particularly helpful when the process transformation is complex or needs to be scalable to bring long-term benefits. It may make more sense to try to manage small, simple initiatives with short-term paybacks in-house.

Program Management Tools and Methods Simplify the Transformation Process

If you want to optimize your program management system, you must choose the right PM tools and methodologies for your implementation strategy. They can streamline complicated tasks and help you build an efficient transformation system. Adopt a forward-looking perspective focused on developing a scalable program management toolkit that you can use for future initiatives as well.

Your next step is to start vetting tools based on your needs. You should also seek guidance from experienced professionals who understand which tools work best and how to use them to add value to your transformation.

Establishing or reevaluating your PMO so your project prioritization is just right can be a tricky business. Our Enterprise Portfolio and Program Management experts will happily work with you to determine your organization’s next steps for moving forward. Let’s Talk