Program manager

A program manager leads a group of related projects that are managed together to get benefits that managing them one at a time wouldn't deliver.

How it works in a university-industry collaboration

That's PMI's definition of a program (PMBOK Guide, eighth edition). Inside a company, a program manager might run every project behind one product platform or one strategic university partnership, setting priorities and sharing people and budget across them, while each project keeps its own project manager.

At a federal funding agency, the title means something else. A DARPA program manager builds a research program, chooses who performs the work, and manages its budget, for a limited term of three to five years (Cheney and Van Atta, 2020). NIH's nearest equivalent is the program official or program officer, "responsible for the programmatic, scientific, and/or technical aspects" of a grant (NIH Grants Policy Statement 1.2). These are the people a PI or a founder talks to about a topic before applying.

Translation Box: program manager

On the academic side: usually the funding agency's official who runs a program and answers applicants' questions about fit.

On the industry side: an internal manager who coordinates several related projects toward one business goal and reports to leadership or a portfolio manager.

What Helikon does with it

On the Pro plan, the Partnership Pipeline puts every partnership in play on one board, from first contact to a completed project, so a program manager can see the whole set at once.