Program Management: Essential Skills for Your Program Success

• Distinguishing between a project and a program
• Defining programs, projects, and portfolios
• Clarifying the roles of the project and program managers
• Setting up a Program Management Office (PMO)

Organizational strategy

• Developing a vision, goals, and objectives
• Assessing the maturity of the organizational strategy

Enterprise architecture

• Defining the business, data, application, and technology architectures
• Describing the organizational portfolio

Defining the current “as-is” and future “to-be” states

• Assessing the “as-is” and future “to-be” states
• Determining which parts of the current state can be used
• Specifying required changes to existing systems and processes
• Establishing required new systems and retirement of systems
• Avoiding the “shelfware” syndrome
• Aligning program requirements with EA

Creating a defendable program business case

• Structuring a business case
• Using a process and a template

Financial Analysis

• Determining costs and benefits
• Applying financial tools

Risks and opportunities

• Identifying risks and opportunities
• Analyzing risks and prioritizing initiatives

Program scope

Program roadmap

• Establishing program components
• Selecting major milestones
• Developing the roadmap

Program management plan

• Estimating the program costs
• Developing subsidiary plans
• Determining resources
• Generating an acquisition strategy
• Developing a program transition plan

Managing the Benefits

• Identifying program benefits
• Planning benefit realization
• Delivering program benefits
• Reviewing and optimizing benefits realization
• Transitioning and sustaining benefits

Program governance

• Establishing the proper governance structure
• Distinguishing program, portfolio and organizational governance
• Defining the decision-making authority
• Implementing a program governance

Stakeholder engagement

• Identifying program stakeholders
• Creating stakeholder profiles
• Generating a stakeholders register
• Planning stakeholder engagement
• Developing a program communications plan
• Establishing the program management team

Program dashboard

• Designing the dashboard to assess program health
• Establishing dashboard utilization and updates

Metrics

• Identifying necessary metrics
• Selecting source of metrics
• Assessing metrics benefits vs. costs

Risks

• Identifying and classify program risks and opportunities
• Assessing program risks probabilities and impacts
• Selecting risks for the dashboard

Monitor and Control

• Identifying issues
• Assessing program health

Leadership skills

• Setting the vision
• Protecting the team
• Dealing with adversity
• Understanding and working with stakeholder expectations

Management skills

• Establishing and following the processes
• Selecting the right people for the right roles
• Mentoring and support
• Negotiating for resources

Communications

• Communicating effectively with staff at all levels
• Driving proper communications between project teams
• Ensuring proper communications with all stakeholders