“Your safety is my responsibility.” – Captain James T. Kirk

A program manager is responsible for leadership over interrelated projects by prioritizing objectives, proper resource allocation to tasks, and strong communication from the executive leadership down to the individual contributor. In many ways a program manager is also responsible for the morale of their people, and they must maintain the pace which is prescribed to them by their executive leaders.

Arvin Sloane from JJ Abrams’s television show Alias was a man responsible for an organization known as SD-6; which was a criminal organization disguised as a secret department of the CIA. Strictly speaking from a job title or organizational chart, Sloane was not a Program Manager. However, in form and action, Sloane executed his office as a Program Manager would. Sloane was the singular authority figure within the office of SD-6, where all operations intel ultimately reached him and using his own intuition and expertise he would make a decision so that his teams could act. He was responsible to a small group of leaders, but he had a unilateral empowerment to conduct operations as he saw fit.

In the show, as a matter of policy, anyone learning about SD-6 who was not specifically on the team had to be killed. The SD-6 security section was routinely monitoring all messages of all their agents which did not require Sloane’s direct involvement. When knowledge of SD-6 was discovered by an agent’s fiance, it was Sloane’s decision and authorization that ordered the assassination to be carried out. Sloane was responsible for the prioritization of the action over other competing items. Even though the security section knew the policy and response to this type of informational exposure, it still needed to take the information to Sloane to enable his decision to proceed with the assassination. While usually not as dramatic, often times a program manager is informed prior to a project team executing an action – even if that action is prescribed by an already established policy.

Arvin Sloane was in charge of most of the day-to-day activities and it appeared as he was the pinnacle authority figure as far as SD-6 was concerned. In fact he reported to the mysterious Alliance of Twelve. The Alliance was a group of wealthy former intelligence officers who traded in weapons, military intelligence, industrial espionage, political agendas, and of course blackmail with the objective of keeping themselves wealthy and in power.

Early in the show, Sloane’s role is to manage the entire SD-6 cell as they gather, collect, and catalog materials that further the goals of the Alliance. He was most likely responsible for communicating successes and failures to the Alliance members, as well as providing timelines to when certain tasks would be completed. In the exact same fashion, a program manager’s role is to keep their executive management informed and to manage their expectations so that those who are conducting the work are not overstressed by unattainable goals.

During the few times we saw an interaction of the Alliance members, Sloane would discuss the most recent accomplishments of his team, as well as outline the path to completing near and long-term objectives. Program managers also frequently raise the profiles of their project teams by highlighting most recent achievements and bringing clarity of what next steps will be taken to achieve near and long-term success; typically during a monthly or quarterly meeting. Of course, we always saw the the Alliance imply that failure would be met with a personal injury or loss of some kind. Thankfully not as rigid, Program Managers are usually the first to gain a sense of urgency from the executive management which they can cascade down to the rest of their team.

Through the early seasons of Alias, we see Sloane managing the efforts of SD-6 along gathering of military intel and political agendas, collection of artifacts, and creation and utilization of technology. Each of these missions, as projects, would yield another unique piece of the larger puzzle that was the SD-6 program mission which Sloane’s responsibility. Analogous with the industry expectations – a program manager’s function is to set priorities for their teams, manage expectations of stakeholders, and most importantly communicate and coordinate efforts towards achieving the program goals.

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