I can’t get no… Satisfaction: Moving on from the dominant approaches to managing quality in complex programs

Achieving customer satisfaction through the active management of quality is a perennial challenge for program and project managers in many contexts. Indeed, we begin with a practitioner problem where despite extensive efforts and apparent success in managing quality, customers were still not satisfied. Exploration of this problem in the current project and programme management (PPM) literature showed a prevalence of the models that were not proving beneficial in practice. Reconceptualizing the program as a service provided some insight, but with limited confidence that the models were appropriate to complex programs. A two-phase study was therefore carried out to develop a more apIpropriate model. The resulting enhanced framework for assessment is shown to be a better interpretation of quality in this context. However, it does challenge some long-held beliefs about service quality - namely the reliance on the perceptions – expectations gap for assessment. Areas for further research are proposed as the study is indicative at this stage.