One of the most challenging aspects of any large endeavor is to manage the processes, people, resources. and commitments associated with portfolios of active and candidate new product development programs. I developed the below graphic to provide an overview of a possible set of data relationships for this situation. It is intended to serve as one view of what these relationships might consist of at a very high level; like any such view, it emphasizes some aspects of the situation, and ignores others.

What it does do is expose my bias and belief in the need for a comprehensive data and process architecture for program management. Such an architecture obviously has impacts to both desired tools and information management challenges intended to support that environment. It also lays the groundwork for some systems thinking about where the leverage might be for improvements in this area. In short, I believe integration and management of information (with careful attention to the maturity of that information) is crucial to success in any endeavor. I also believe few are able to realistically capture and play back such details, since they haven't had the equivalent of a helicopter ride across this entire landscape, or cannot represent that experience effectively to others in a useful fashion.

As this view (see medium and large versions of the representation below) and associated data model representations evolve, I hope to enhance them to include the following additional features:

• provisions for linkage of the elements in this graphic to functionality and content on this web site which will discuss and implement plans to support this aspect of program management with new features for this site.
• evolution of this information into various systems-thinking diagrams that could be used to explain how the dynamic 'ripple effect' impacts of uncertainty and changes in one part of this diagram can impact other parts
• ways to represent these interrelationships as dashboards to summarize overall health of these various activities with respect to stability, throughput, and balanced flow.
• a means of capturing the process elements (aka 'activities') on this diagram, in a fashion such that process inputs and outputs will be able to be captured, reviewed and managed as a first step towards process integration.