Understanding the modern TPM

In the 1967 book The Technical Program Manager’s Guide to Survival, by Melvin Silverman, the author defines a program as an organization created to accomplish a specific goal. This organization was a group within a company that existed for the sole purpose of achieving the program goals, and it was to be dissolved once the goal was realized. You can see where the computer definition of a program gets its origins – a bit of organized code that executes to accomplish a task or goal! Once the task is complete, the computer program will terminate. Computer programs have evolved in complexity since their early days, as has the TPM, but the origins have a clear connection in meaning and purpose.

I found Mr. Silverman’s book while attempting to uncover the origins of the TPM role. What transpired during this research is that the usage of TPM had a similar evolution to the word program. The term went from a generic use to a more specific...