Program management: steering a set of related projects

A program is a set of projects identified as contributing to a common objective. Once the program exists, projects are attached to it and the whole can be steered as a portfolio dedicated to that program.

Program is not “a big project”

A project delivers an output; a program delivers a benefit that no single project produces on its own. That is why programs are steered on outcomes and dependencies rather than on a single schedule.

What the program manager watches

Cross-project dependencies, shared resources, the consolidated budget and the risks that only exist at the seams between projects. Most program failures happen at those seams, not inside the individual projects.

Consolidation without re-entry

In FoxPlan, a program is a portfolio: schedules, workload and budgets consolidate automatically from the underlying projects, so the program view is always based on the same data the project teams maintain.