TPM Knowledge
A program roadmap is a shared decision about where you are going, not a list of dates. Most program roadmaps are a wall of bars on a timeline. Features down the left, months across the top, colored rectangles in the middle. It looks like a plan. It is really a
TPM Knowledge
For years, the question “TPM vs PM vs EM” quietly stressed me out. Not in a theoretical way, but in a very real “I have no idea what I actually want to be” way. Not because I was overthinking titles, but because my early career created a lot of mixed
TPM Knowledge
Every technical program manager eventually runs into the same uncomfortable fact: you are accountable for outcomes you cannot command. The engineers do not report to you. The architects do not need your sign-off. The executive who set the deadline will not write a line of the code that meets it.
TPM Knowledge
Escalate the problem, not the person Escalation is one of the most misunderstood tools a technical program manager has. Done wrong, it reads as an accusation: you went over someone's head, you made them look bad, you imported a fight. Done right, it is the fastest, cleanest way
TPM Knowledge
Make every dependency explicit, tracked, and owned Unmanaged dependencies are the number-one cause of preventable program slips. Not technical complexity, not headcount, not changing requirements. Dependencies. And here is the frustrating part: they are also the most predictable risk in any large program. A dependency that slips rarely surprises anyone
TPM Knowledge
You have no authority over them. Trust is the only currency you actually have. A technical program manager runs work through people who do not report to them. No one on the engineering teams has to do what I ask. They have their own managers, their own roadmaps, their own
TPM Knowledge
Centralize the information, decentralize the work When I joined the a major tech company in 2022, reliability worked the way it does at a lot of places that copied the early Google model: a large site reliability engineering organization, with SREs embedded across every product. The split was simple on