How to Manage Complex Programs by Tom Kendrick

Author:Tom Kendrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMACOM
Published: 2016-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

HIERARCHICAL PLAN BASELINES AND PLAN DOCUMENTATION

Following iterative project and program planning, risk assessment and further plan adjustments, and revising scope to reflect any shifts necessitated by planned risk responses, you are ready to set a program baseline for the current phase of work.

Prepare for Program Baselining

Perform an overall program plan inspection looking for inconsistencies, oversights, overly aggressive estimates, resource conflicts, and other defects. Review the actual funding and effort required for similar past program efforts to verify that your program has similar levels of committed resources. Contrast the timing and results delivered by earlier programs (program phases) with your objectives. If your plans call for results that are in excess of previous outcomes, consider revising your scope, estimates, or deadlines to make your program plans more realistic.

Also compare the results of your planning with your stated goals for the program and stakeholder expectations. If there are important program objectives that are out of sync with the results of your plans, consult with your program sponsor and develop a strategy for resolving the inconsistencies. If you are unable to align program realities with prevailing expectations, you will need to find a way to change the expectations. This is particularly true for programs planned using stage-gates for integrated big-bang delivery, but it applies as well to programs having shorter, iteration-based objectives.

When the gaps between stated program goals and what is feasible are substantial, consider your options. Your planning efforts will provide a great deal of information on what can be accomplished, as well as explanations for why some requested deliverables might be unattainable. You may find alternatives that revise your program roadmap and phase plans to deliver program outputs with greater frequency, focusing on providing the most important results sooner. There may be options for adjusting the scope to deliver a superior result based on technology or work methods unknown to your stakeholders. Working with knowledgeable program staff and project leaders, there may be dozens of possible program variations worthy of consideration.

Programs vary significantly in scale and complexity, but it is always useful to prepare your information for presentation to sponsors, management, and key stakeholders in layers of detail, starting with a very clear high-level summary. Assemble all of your detail documents, such as the program milestone or release timeline, the master interface table, program resource analysis, and all the project-level information. Use your planning data to develop a short executive summary of your program plan describing the overall approach, key dates, significant risks, and any outstanding issues you need to address. Plan to begin program baseline discussions with a concise overview. Diving immediately into enormous volumes of planning detail tends to be more annoying than helpful, so focus initially on the headlines and most essential information.

In addition to summary information, plan to bring along details to support any discussions that may require them. Include the following:

•The program roadmap

•Your high-level program milestone chart for the current program phase or release

•A short description of all the projects in the program showing the roles

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