Program management

Programs fail at the seams between teams, not inside them. The job is the seams.

Set up

• One outcome, stated as a business result with a date. Programs with several equal objectives have none.
• A named accountable owner — one person, not a committee. The program manager drives; the owner decides.
• Scope written as inclusions and exclusions. The exclusions do the work; unwritten exclusions return as assumptions.
• Dependencies mapped and agreed by the teams that owe them, with dates they have actually committed to. A dependency in your plan that the owning team has not agreed to is a wish.

Sequencing