Programme and delivery management, answered in full.
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28 questions on programme and delivery management, answered by Tenhaw, a UK AI consultancy and AI delivery partner based in London. Nothing here is a summary: each answer is the exact text from the page that owns it, and every group links back to that page for the context around it.
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Programme & Delivery Management
Answered on Programme & Delivery Management, and rendered here in the same words.
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Will Tenhaw manage a programme it is not building?
Yes, and it is a deliberate part of the offer. Tenhaw provides programme and delivery management across mixed estates of systems integrators, internal teams and specialist vendors, with no requirement that we build any of it. Delivery governance is where the practice originated and it stands on its own.
Can you supply an AI programme manager without building anything?
Yes. This rung is sold on its own and clients do appoint us to governance only. You get an AI programme director or senior programme manager, with partner oversight from James Rooney, running governance, probabilistic forecasting, dependency management and supplier performance reporting across whoever is building the thing. The fee is £18,000 to £35,000 a month depending on programme size and supplier count. The bottom of that band is about three days a week of a senior lead plus oversight, and the top is a full-time lead with delivery support as the supplier count grows.
Can I hire a fractional AI delivery lead?
Yes. You get a senior delivery lead on a part-time engagement, typically two to three days a week, at a fixed monthly fee with thirty days' notice either way. The person is contracted by Tenhaw rather than employed by you or placed by an agency, screened to BS7858 standard before they touch your estate, with James Rooney accountable for the work alongside them. At the published rate card, three days a week of a senior programme lead with partner oversight lands at the bottom of the £18,000 to £35,000 band.
How do you avoid a conflict of interest when you are also a supplier?
By reporting on our own workstreams in the same pack, to the same standard, as everyone else's, including when we are the ones behind. Where we hold both roles we say so explicitly to the board, and clients can and do appoint us to governance only, which keeps the governance entirely independent of the build.
What does programme management for an AI transformation cost?
Tenhaw prices programme and delivery management between £18,000 and £35,000 per month depending on programme size and supplier count, with partner oversight included. It is deliberately the lowest-cost rung, because delivery governance is often where a programme is won or lost. It is bought on its own with no build commitment attached, and it runs monthly on 30 days' notice either way, so what you commit to is a month at a time.
Why does an agentic consultancy offer programme management?
Because most agentic programmes fail on delivery discipline rather than on technology, and because that discipline is the deepest part of our track record: a decade running delivery at HSBC across 150+ teams and a $102M budget, at Anglo American across three continents, and at Discovery under a fixed launch date. Agentic transformation is a change programme with AI in it, and the change part is where programmes die.
Can you take over a programme that is already in trouble?
It is the most common reason we are called. The first four weeks establish what is genuinely in flight versus what the board currently believes, which is usually where the gap is. We will tell you what we find, including when the answer is that the programme should be descoped or stopped rather than rescued.
What does the monthly board report contain?
The same four sections every month, with every figure drawn from your programme's own delivery data. It opens with delivery dates as intervals. Each commitment carries a p50 and a p85 date simulated from real throughput, because a single date with no interval around it tells a board nothing about whether to act. Then supplier performance, committed against delivered, in one table to one standard, with Tenhaw's own workstreams appearing in it exactly as everyone else's do. Then risks and issues, each with a named human owner, an escalation state and the date it last moved. Finally benefits in currency: what each outcome was priced at, what has been realised, and what is forecast at close.
Can we bring programme governance back in-house later?
Yes, and the engagement is designed to end that way. A handover date is agreed rather than left open, and the last phase of the work is building the capability inside your organisation to run the governance, the forecasting and the supplier management without us. It runs monthly and is cancellable on 30 days' written notice either way, with no build commitment attached, so there is nothing to unpick when you take it back. The pack and everything produced under it is yours, and the cadence and forecasting method behind it are published in full, so your own people can keep running what the board has been steering with.
What do we get for £18,000 a month versus £35,000?
The band tracks programme size and supplier count. At £18,000 a month that is roughly three days a week of a senior programme lead at the published senior practitioner rate of £1,250 a day, with partner oversight from James Rooney on top, which is enough to run governance, probabilistic forecasting and supplier management on a single programme. As the programme scales and more suppliers come into it, the lead goes full-time and picks up delivery support, and that is what carries the fee toward £35,000. There is deliberately no build engineer in the fee at either end, since this rung governs whoever is building, including when that is nobody from Tenhaw.
Why pay for governance instead of putting the money into more delivery?
Because more build capacity does not fix a programme nobody is steering, and it usually just puts more work in flight. Governance is deliberately the cheapest rung we sell, £18,000 to £35,000 a month, and the fee buys no engineer at all, because the job is to govern whoever is building, including when that is nobody from Tenhaw. What you get for it is forecasting a board can plan against, dependencies managed across every supplier in the programme, and slips surfaced while there is still time to act on them. If the real constraint turns out to be engineering capacity rather than delivery discipline, we will say so and point you at a different rung.
Our systems integrator offered to run the PMO. Why not let them?
You can, but you are then asking a supplier to report on its own delivery to your board. This rung exists to be independent. It governs mixed estates of systems integrators, internal teams and specialist vendors, and clients do appoint us to governance only, with no requirement that we build any of the programme. Every supplier's committed against delivered work lands in one table to one standard, and where a Tenhaw workstream is behind it appears there exactly as everyone else's does. Where we do hold both governance and a build role, the board is told so explicitly rather than left to work it out.
Who do you need access to in the first four weeks?
The people who know what is genuinely in flight, and the delivery data itself rather than the status pack written about it. Weeks one to four exist to establish the truth: what each supplier has committed to, where dependencies actually sit, and what the board currently believes against what is real, which is normally where the gap turns out to be. In practice that means each supplier's delivery lead, your own team leads and the sponsor, plus read access to the tooling the work runs in. Access matters more than diary time, because a forecast built from real throughput needs the underlying data, and a status pack is only ever as honest as what sits beneath it.
We already have a programme director. Do we still need this?
Probably not. Programmes with credible delivery leadership already in place sit at the top of our own not-for list. Two situations still earn the fee. One is a board that does not trust the reporting it receives, which is a governance problem rather than a personnel one. The other is a multi-supplier estate where each supplier governs its own patch and nobody owns the whole, in which case the work sits above the individual programmes rather than replacing anyone in them. A thirty-minute call is usually enough to establish which of those you have, if either.
How much of our team's time does the governance take each month?
Less than the reporting you are almost certainly doing today. The figures in the monthly pack come out of your programme's own delivery data rather than out of every team assembling a status update, so what your people spend time on is the conversations that produce decisions: dependency calls, risk reviews where an item actually moves, and the board session itself. Each risk carries one named owner and the date it last moved, so the effort lands on the person who owns the item while it is live rather than on everyone every week. If governance is generating more slide production than decisions it has failed, and fixing that is our job.
Can you cover a vacant delivery director seat while we recruit?
Yes. The seat is vacant, newly created or in trouble, a permanent search runs to six months, and the programme will not wait that long, which is the usual reason the interim delivery director role exists. We can be in post this month with one senior programme lead and partner oversight from James Rooney behind them, running governance, forecasting and supplier management while your search continues. Because it runs monthly on thirty days' notice either way, it ends when your permanent hire lands rather than on a fixed term, and building the capability to run this without us is the last phase of the work rather than an afterthought.
How early would the board hear that a benefit is going to be missed?
While there is still a quarter left to act on it, which is why benefits sit in the monthly pack rather than in a closure report. Each outcome is carried in currency: what it was priced at, what has been realised so far, and what is now forecast at close. A widening gap therefore shows up as a trend across consecutive packs instead of as a surprise at the end, and it arrives with a decision attached rather than as a red square on a slide. Sometimes that decision is to refocus the work, and sometimes it is to descope or stop it, which we will recommend when it is the honest answer.
Isn't this just an expensive project manager?
It is a programme director's seat rather than a project manager's, and the difference is scope. Tenhaw's lead owns the whole programme across every supplier in it, including the ones we are not, holding each to what it signed up to against what has landed, and managing the dependencies between them, which no single supplier's project manager can do. The lead is at the published senior practitioner rate of £1,250 a day with partner oversight from James Rooney on top, drawing on a decade running delivery at HSBC, Anglo American and Discovery. If one team is the whole programme, a good delivery manager is cheaper and enough. This rung is built for the case where nobody owns the whole.
What happens to the governance if we change build supplier mid-programme?
The governance barely changes. An incoming supplier joins the same table, to the same standard, as everyone already in it. Tenhaw governs mixed estates of systems integrators, internal teams and specialist vendors with no requirement that we build any of it, so a change of builder is a commitment and dependency problem rather than a rebuild of the reporting. What honestly changes is the forecast. Dates here are simulated from your programme's own throughput, and a supplier with no history in your environment has none to simulate from, so the interval starts wide and tightens as work lands. How long that takes depends on how much of the work in flight transfers rather than restarts.
Will you govern a transformation programme that isn't about AI?
Yes, though Tenhaw builds and prices this rung for agentic transformation programmes at £18,000 to £35,000 a month. Our position is that an agentic programme is a change programme with AI in it, and the change part is where programmes die, which is why the discipline behind this rung predates the technology: a decade running delivery at HSBC across 150+ teams and a $102M budget, at Anglo American across three continents, and at Discovery under a fixed launch date. Where there is no AI or automation anywhere in the scope, a general programme firm will usually be the better buy and we will say so. What settles it is whether the hard part is the technology or the delivery discipline.
Do we have to move our delivery data into your tools?
No, and there is nothing to buy or migrate. Tenhaw works inside the tooling your programme already runs in, under your own policies, and the monthly pack is produced from that delivery data rather than from a parallel system we install and you later lose. Every figure in it therefore traces back to a record your own people can open, which is what makes the reporting challengeable rather than something a board takes on trust. The cadence and the forecasting method behind the pack are published in full, so nothing underneath the numbers is proprietary to us. What varies between clients is whether the tooling records work at a level anyone can count.
Could a programme dashboard do this instead of paying for a person?
A dashboard shows you the numbers. It will not chase the supplier whose commitment quietly moved. Tenhaw's £18,000 to £35,000 a month buys a senior programme lead with partner oversight from James Rooney, and what earns the fee is the part no tool does: holding each supplier to what it committed to, managing dependencies between them, carrying every risk to a named owner until it moves, and telling a board plainly when the honest recommendation is to descope or stop. If your delivery data is already clean and someone senior reads it every week, a dashboard is genuinely cheaper. The test is whether anyone today owns the whole programme rather than their own part of it.
Our board wants one date, not a range. Does this work for them?
They get dates, just two of them. Tenhaw reports every commitment with a p50 and a p85 completion date simulated from your programme's own throughput, because one date on its own says nothing about how much room is left, whereas a p85 that has drifted three weeks across two packs is still something a board can act on. Boards that need a single number to say out loud generally commit externally to the p85 and manage internally to the p50. The honest change is that some dates move at the first pack, and the forecasting method is published in full, so your people can challenge how a number was produced rather than argue with the number itself.
How does this sit with the PMO we already have?
Usually above it rather than instead of it. Tenhaw governs the whole programme across every supplier in it and owns the forecasting and the reporting standard, while your PMO keeps running the machinery it already runs. The pack is built from your delivery data, so it sets a standard rather than adding another reporting round on top of the ones you have. The handover phase of the engagement builds the capability to run all of it in-house on an agreed date, and an existing PMO is normally where that lands. Where your board already trusts and acts on the reporting it gets today, you do not need this.
Do you govern our internal teams as well as outside suppliers?
Both, and they sit in the same table. Tenhaw is built for mixed estates: systems integrators, internal teams and specialist vendors, each reported committed against delivered to one standard, with our own workstreams in there too where we are building something. Internal teams are often the harder half, because an external supplier usually has commitments written into a contract, while an internal team frequently has neither the commitment written down nor throughput anyone has kept. What Tenhaw does not hold is line management over your people, so escalation runs through your sponsor, which is why the sponsor is one of the first people the engagement needs.
What if the board sees the pack and nothing changes?
Then the governance has failed, and Tenhaw will say so rather than keep invoicing for reporting. The pack exists to produce decisions, which is why every risk carries a named owner and the date it last moved, and why items that have not moved are shown as not having moved rather than quietly restated. If the same items keep reappearing and no decision follows them, the constraint is your decision-making rather than your delivery discipline, and more governance will not fix that. It runs monthly on 30 days' notice either way, so stopping is cheap. Whether a stalled forum can be unstuck or has to be replaced is a question about your organisation, not about the pack.
Are the first four weeks just a paid review of ourselves?
No, and they are not billed as a separate study. Tenhaw charges the same monthly fee from day one, £18,000 to £35,000 depending on programme size and supplier count, with no discovery charge on top. What those four weeks produce is the baseline everything afterwards is forecast and reported against: what each supplier has actually signed up to, where the dependencies between them sit, and how much throughput history exists to forecast from. Because it is cancellable on 30 days' notice either way, a first month that finds the programme healthier than the board feared is a cheap answer to have. How much of that month is fact-finding depends on how many suppliers already report to a common standard.
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Talk it through1424 questions, grouped by subject
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