Lightweight Program Management for Complex Efforts

Something I've found myself doing a lot over the years is lightweight program management.

There's a complex effort involving multiple related projects with different people and teams participating, and it's hard to keep track of it all.

A lot of folks reach for heavyweight tools and processes, but in my experience not only is it overkill, it can actively slow things down when optimizing for ongoing forward progress and adaptation is more important.

I've tried a bunch of different tools to manage these, but I've yet to find a more effective way to track this in most cases and keep everyone up to date than a cloud document or wiki page with:

• Overall status
• A list of active projects with a point person and key links
• A weekly or bi-weekly meeting with an email or chat update to key people after the fact summarizing the latest.

A tip of the hat to Ann Mackay, PSM and Chris Daily for schooling me by example on how to do this without getting bogged down.