Project managers, and program managers, and transformation leads, oh my.

Bryan Skwirut — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:42:11 GMT

Hey there 👋, I’m Bryan

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If you’re like me, you’ve probably noticed that there are dozens of titles with apparently similar responsibilities. Likewise, if you’re like me, you may find yourself asking, “what are all of these roles, and how are they different from what I do today?” Maybe you’re feeling stuck as a project manager, maybe you’re interested in leveling up, or perhaps you just want to be the best you that you can be. That’s what I wanted. And so I set out to make sense of it. Here’s what I know from many hours of research and spending over a decade in the field.

For starters, I began my career as an office manager doing mostly repetitive, administrative tasks, but it wasn’t long before I officially made the jump to project manager. From there I was hooked. Drawn to work that required thinking, creativity, human connection, and the feeling that I had influence over a project’s success. In other words, I felt what many early project managers feel at one time or another – valued. Over time I was given more projects, bigger projects, more important projects. I was visible to leadership, and at one point, was even assigned a project that allowed me to fly in the company jet. But I always found myself wondering what else was out there.

Below is a practical breakdown of common enterprise roles, what makes them different, and tangible advice on how to navigate them. It’s important to note that not every organization subscribes to this methodology exactly (if that were the case we wouldn’t be confused!), and for better or worse, there are some unique snowflakes out there adding to the chaos. I also expect new roles to emerge as AI continues to evolve. My goal is to provide you with an actionable perspective on how to think about these similar but different roles, whether you’re exploring career advancement or simply to expand your awareness.

What is Project Management?

Project management is likely the role in which you are most familiar, even if you don’t know it yet. In its most simple form, a project manager oversees a temporary body of work, big or small, and manages scope, budget, quality, and speed. They communicate status to interested parties and strive to keep work “on track”. Examples can range from designing a new landing page to building a new data center and beyond.

If you’re brand new to project management - You may find these overviews helpful:

What is Project Management? (Explained in 10 Minutes) by Max Mao
Become a Project Manager with No Experience: Guaranteed! by Elvis Rodriguez

The field of project management is absolutely massive and encompasses most industries and organizations, all around the world.

How do I become a Project Manager?

There are clear paths to project management. Many people find entry-level roles starting out as a team member on a project as a coordinator or analyst. But that’s far from the only way to get there, and quite honestly, people often show up from a multitude of paths. The important part about getting into an entry-level PM role has less to do with what your prior role was and more to do with how you did it, and what skills you can demonstrate today.

The most successful PMs I’ve worked with nearly always exhibit the same qualities. They are recognized as the “reliable” person on a team – staying organized, planning ahead, setting reminders, proactively meeting to work through an issue. The reality is, many people do this on teams without the formal title of PM. These are the teammates that don’t mind being the “adult in the room”, in fact, they find it difficult not to be. If this sounds like you, you’ve likely got a shot at landing a PM job managing smaller projects with little to no experience.

If you’re interested in learning more, consider one of these courses.

Google Project Management Certificate
https://grow.google/certificates/project-management/
Project Management Institute
https://www.pmi.org/certifications/certified-associate-capm

Hiring managers may not always give these certificates much weight, however if you’re unfamiliar with project management and wondering about what you don’t know, then it’s a really good place to start.

Project Management Summarized

(just kidding… kind of)

What is Program Management?

Program management is the coordinated management of a group of related projects to achieve a strategic outcome. It is not just a bunch of projects. Successful programs manage project dependencies, strategic alignment, and risk management at scale. Of course since your program is often made up of individual projects, among other things, it’s wise to be skilled in project management first. The primary difference is that PgMs tend to have longer-term strategic objectives, and often, two or more interrelated projects. These embedded projects may have their own dedicated project managers to support those initiatives.

Many of the skills required to be a successful project manager are similar to that of a program manager. Just like PMs, program managers are tasked with leading by influence, communicating clearly to interested parties (stakeholders), keeping individual contributors in alignment, prioritizing work, and exercising judgement. Both live their day-to-day lives in planning and execution. So you might be wondering…

How do I become a Program Manager?

You don’t hear a ton of stories about people becoming a program manager without experience, and it definitely helps to have a few team projects behind you before making a switch. To win-over a hiring manager, you’ll need to demonstrate your experience thinking and acting like a program manager. Not surprisingly, a lot of this revolves around your people skills. If you’re a recent graduate, this could potentially look like group projects you’ve led that had competing priorities, dependencies, team disagreement, and making decisions. If you’re early in your career, it’s the same lens, but could cover a team initiative you led to completion. The important part is your ability to demonstrate your skills guiding a team without formal authority.

After a lot of searching, I was able to find 1 Program Manager job that doesn’t explicitly require any prior years of experience, though it was listed as preferred.

I also had the opportunity to speak with a former program manager at Microsoft who started their career directly in this role. Here are 4 things they shared for you to consider when pursuing a role in program management:

If you’ve been a PM, you’ll find that your underlying skill set for the PgM role is likely already sufficient. But more so than in project management the topic areas are specific and PgMs often function as subject matter experts over a critical cross-functional workstream.
Program management primarily exists at large and slightly complex organizations. At start ups you’ll find the founding team is wearing many hats and likely one of them is the role of program manager.
You need to be able to quickly identify what is going well and what is not. Be able to build a plan, but also understand “why are we doing this”, and “what is important vs not important”. That last part is key.
Most importantly, if you want to be a program manager, then decide that today. Say that you are and don’t let anyone tell you differently. Pick the domain you’re interested in, learn the technology, and go for it!

Key Takeaways

If you want to become a program manager, consider learning the basics of project management as a foundation. In your search, target large, complex organizations that hire program managers. Find a domain or subject that interests you and start learning today. Finally, believe in yourself. You can do it.

Nothing worth doing happens overnight.

Don’t fall for it.

What is Enterprise Transformation?

A Transformation is to change how a company works so it can reach a level of performance its current operating model can’t deliver. Unlike projects or programs, a business transformation is always centered around major change that is core to how the business operates. Change to how people do work, who’s doing the work, roles and responsibilities, compensation, what “good” looks like – nothing is off the table. These types of initiatives are what I would describe as “gnarly”, as they always involve major changes to the people inside the business being transformed.

To provide some context, in one of the most recent transformation projects I ran, the following occurred simultaneously:

Established an enterprise partnership to access new technology
Moved (and altered) over 500 jobs
Redesigned go-to-market and back-office functions for an entire suite of products and services
Shut down an adjacent business unit

This was in an effort to improve the performance of an underperforming business. The effort took place over 24 months and ended when business performance met target.

What is a Transformation Lead?

Enter the Transformation lead. Compared to PMs and PgMs, transformation leads are the least common and most ambiguous of the three.

I tend to think of transformation leads as mini-COOs. They are master orchestrators, and do things like: build the roadmap and sequencing, make sure workstreams don’t collide, map out dependencies, ensure the business can absorb the change, run the governance cadence, and produce the analysis the CEO and board need to make calls. They stage-gate initiatives, frame go/no-go decisions, carry out stakeholder choreography (which is mostly political work), manage consultants (if they’re on the engagement), hold scope, transfer knowledge, coordinate across firms, and design the operating rhythm (what meetings exist, who’s in them, what decisions they make, how escalation works).

Most importantly though, a transformation lead owns value capture. Every transformation promises a number whether its cost out, revenue up, or productivity gained. This is often co-owned with finance and is the single most underrated part of the role. That and absorbing friction — a good transformation lead takes political hits so the functional leaders don’t have to.

If you’re an experienced project manager or program manager, a lot of this is probably not foreign to you.

What makes a Transformation Lead Different?

Agility. I’m not talking about Agile the framework, but the actual word agility – the ability to not only pivot quickly when priorities shift, but also bring others along with you. Transformation leads are forward thinking and view change as an opportunity for innovation, and often frame unpredictability as a shared, solvable challenge rather than an existential threat. Project managers and program managers are following a process, whereas transformation leads make the shift from protecting the past to shaping the future.

How can I become a Transformation Lead?

If you are a project or program manager interested in transformation work there are a few key areas to sharpen your skills to increase your chances of landing a role in transformation.

Systems thinking. You’re likely familiar with the concept, but the specific systems-thinking muscle that matters for transformation is being able to trace a change in one place to its second- and third-order effects to predict where resistance will surface. A great PM already does this for project dependencies. The transformation jump is extending it from technical dependencies to organizational ones: incentives, careers, identities, comp plans, who has to give up power for the change to work. That’s the part that’s usually invisible until it derails an initiative.
Financial fluency. A great PM is judged on whether the project is delivered, while a transformation lead is judged on whether the number moved. The mindset shift is from “did we ship what we said we’d ship” to “did the P&L change in the way we promised.” This is the single biggest gap. Most PMs can read a budget, however few can credibly defend a benefits case to a CFO. This is the skill that, once you have it, changes how senior leaders treat you in a room. To get there, volunteer to co-own the value case on your next program, not just the delivery plan. Sit with finance. Learn how the controllers actually validate the savings. Make yourself the person who knows whether the number is real.
Breadth of knowledge. Take a real tour in another function. Eighteen months in finance, ops, or HR is worth more than any certificate. Transformation leads have to be credible in conversations with people whose jobs they don’t have.

Something actionable you can do today: ask to co-own benefits realization on whatever project or program you’re currently running. That single move is the highest-leverage path from program manager to transformation lead.

Key Takeaways

Transformations are inherently about major change, and driving people, process, and technology from current state → future state, in an attempt to improve business performance. The two biggest differences between a transformation lead and a PM or PgM is the focus on P&L improvement and managing people through periods of intense change.

In Summary

Here is a handy chart to reference back to for the primary differences among project manager, program manager, and transformation lead.

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Bryan 👋

P.S. - Let me know in the comments if you found this newsletter helpful. Your feedback would mean the world to me 🙏

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Project managers, and program managers, and transformation leads, oh my.