What do you enjoy most about your program manager career?

What do you enjoy most about being a program manager? What do you dislike the most? Is it challenging? Are there many opportunities to learn and advance?

What keeps you at your job?

Program Manager is facilitating decision making in the company. He must possess breadth of experience and depth of knowledge. The higher the level of teams being facilitated, the more strategic, better challenge and more opportunity to learn. It is constantly growing and learning.

My experience being a Program Manager is exciting. I have involved in a number of programs in many countries worldwide. What I like most is being in a position that allows to see the BIG PICTURE how the program is performing in-line to the strategic goals, mission and vision. Like what Budianto mentioned, this is to facilitate top-level decision making, hence the ability to relate well (in my case IT to business)is very important.

A Program Manager has to be good at "seeing the forest" and not the "trees". Only if he/she needs to understand a particular issue well then he/she needs to go down to the "tree" level. The ability to RELATE is very important because things/events don't happened in vacuum. Hence, his/her knowledge has to be beyond the subject matter (in my case I have to go beyond IT). This is where the real fun and challenges is ... the continuous learning.