“…If you wanted to coordinate with ships all over the world, you couldn’t send one signal to every place at the same time.” – Dr. David Levinson, Independence Day

Confusion is common among people both in and outside of the business around what the differences and similarities are between a project and a program. A project we have already defined in my older blog post How TV shows and movies…help us answer: “What is a project?”, as well as defined what a program is in What is a program?

If going backwards isn’t your thing, and believe me there are plenty of people who believe that forward is the only way, then I’ll recap quickly. A project is a temporary set of tasks which result in a unique product or service as the outcome. A program is a series of at least two related projects that combined can achieve an outcome that is greater than the sum of their efforts.

One of my favorite examples of how a program and interrelated projects are affiliated is the coordinated attack in the movie Independence Day; because it shows us not only how a Program is organized, but there are also very similar constraints and challenges which the aliens’ Program and our own Programs share in concept.

In Independence Day, there is a massive Mothership which approaches Earth from beyond the stars. Upon first glimpse, the massive Mothership appears to be one, singular entity which parks behind the Moon. Once in the appropriate position, the Mothership releases 36 City Destroyers. These smaller destroyer ships are deployed around our planet where they take up position above our 36 most important cities. By using the satellites that are surrounding Earth, they are able to send signals around the Earth without having direct line of sight with one another. All of this is of course taking place while the Mothership powers their shield systems and manage countdown timers.

In this example, the Mothership is the program. It provides the larger structure by which the smaller projects were brought to their target location. There is also some executive or autocratic power from the Mothership as it clearly has the coordination and organizational role over the Destroyers. The shield is perhaps the most critical advantage that the aliens have over the human race; and the energy to power that advantage is somehow being broadcast down to the smaller Destroyer craft.

The Destroyer crafts in the movie are already impressive upon their own, sporting a massively destructive beam weapon that effectively destroys the entire city above which they float. The Destroyers also have hundreds of smaller craft which they use to counter the jet fighters of the humans. These Destroyers can easily represent projects; as they are autonomous and individually powerful, however each has domain over a unique smaller effort that drives towards the goal of the larger program.

Each of the Destroyers is deployed and sent to destroy a singular city, much like a project could be assigned to accomplish a particular task. As each of the Destroyers destroy their own particular target city, they complete their particular assignment to 100% while contributing a little under 3% to the overall goal of complete extermination of the human race. The binding relationship which ties all of the Destroyer craft together is that they are linked to the mothership which controls the shields and the countdown timer. In this, we can see clearly that the Program level of control is responsible for the coordinated timing of efforts for all of the related projects.

Since we had a very human-centric view in ID4 perhaps there were specific challenges that the aliens had to overcome that we simply didn’t get to see, as they managed their programs and projects. However, the relationship between projects and programs is ideally equally as clear within the context of the professional world. The Program level is crucial in providing the highest-level of oversight and resources to the individual projects. The projects are responsible for completing tasks at a more ground-level which contribute to a larger whole objective.

Can’t wait for the ID4 sequel.

* So these guys actually do a pretty interesting thing where they work through and comment on match ups they’d like to see for some cool cross franchise battles. I think we’ve all done that in our minds for at least a month or so after you see a great movie. Looks like their stuff is last updated in 2000, but it’s cool to visit.