Program Manager

You've got a program manager, and then you've got a project manager. The project manager is the person you deal with every day, the one you report to with your part of the project. The program manager shows up every once in a while, gives a speech, or asks how you're doing, even though they clearly have no idea who you are or what you do.

Or, to put it another way, a program manager oversees a set of related projects. It's a position that sits on top of a series of project managers, each of whom have their own particular venture to manage.

You work at a movie studio that just bought a new set of superhero characters: the Underwear Gang. It includes a stable of 25 characters. The company immediately puts three movies in the works, based on three different characters, with a fourth team-up movie set to come out five years from now.

Each of those individual movies will have a producer. Those are the project managers in this scenario. Meanwhile, you're put in charge of the entire Underwear Gang brand. You are the program manager. You make sure that all the projects are on schedule, and ensure that all the details in the movies fit together seamlessly for the big team-up that's surely coming at some point.

The term "program manager" comes up most in the IT or credit card industries.