Program control from the bottom up--exploring the working side

All businesses need program controls to monitor their program activities and measure their program progress and performance, controls that generate the information executives need to make effective business decisions. This paper discusses an account of how Battelle-Pacific Northwest Laboratory developed, implemented, and monitored a program control methodology, one that uses a bottom-up method that reverses the traditional top-down approach to controlling programs. In doing so, it examines the working side of controlling programs and outlines the approaches and techniques that the company's program control specialist used--as well as the obstacles and problems encountered--while managing this bottom-up approach in a company with a highly educated workforce. It details the history of developing this approach, identifies the goal of program control, the attributes of an effective program control specialist, and the process for implementing and managing program control in relation to work breakdown structures.