Project & Program Management

Big projects still need a delivery shape. The page starts with how big tech actually runs projects, then separates the PM, TPM, and tech-lead roles, and ends with the single-threaded owner model and an agile extension for AI teams.

The same notes are in Data Program Management and Project Management.

The first surprise is that the famous methodology is mostly missing at the top. How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum is Gergely Orosz's survey of how tech projects run across the industry, why Scrum is absent from Big Tech, and what others should take from that.

If the process is not Scrum, the roles carry the delivery. Product manager vs project manager vs technical program manager is Julius Uy's comparison of the three, written against the backdrop of the Singapore tech scene growing in one decade from a regional sales and delivery center into a concentration of startups. On the engineering side, Tech Lead vs Team Lead is Jade Rubick on the ways people break up leadership roles on engineering teams (engineering manager, tech lead, and single-threaded owner) and how some responsibilities are split between the engineering leader and other functions. The last of those roles gets its own post: Single Threaded Owner, i.e., "a team focusing on a single thing at a time" - by Jade Rubick

For an AI team, the delivery shape itself has to stretch. Flexeegile (December 2024) extends program management for an AI team.