Key Terms Used in Program Management

Program

A program is a collection of related projects and programs.

Program Manager

Program managers coordinate and oversee multiple programs and projects, track program and project progress, and communicate program health to program stakeholders. Program managers use the Programs user interface to create, edit, delete, and analyze programs and create action plans to address potential risks and issues. They have access to programs that they own, and to programs on which they are contributors.

Program Stakeholder

A program stakeholder is a person that is interested in a program and has the ability to impact its success. Program stakeholders use the Program Stakeholders user interface to view published reports where they are invited members. They can share insights, provide guidance, and collaborate with their program manager and fellow stakeholders using comments entered for each report version.

Project

A project is a time-bound initiative that achieves a specific goal. This goal could be anything: a new building, a software application, or even a methodology of performing specific tasks. Projects typically require planning, people, equipment, materials, and budgets, each of which must be managed efficiently if the project is to succeed.

Program Members

Program members are stakeholders and other program managers who contribute to a program. Program members may offer guidance on program management and tracking, and view program progress reports when the program manager publishes them.

Program stakeholders are executives in the company who are interested in the initiative. Their key concerns are typically around the timeline, scope, effort, and budget associated with the program.

In the Program Management application, stakeholders can view program reports when program managers publish them. They can also add comments to programs after they review program reports.

Program Calendar

Use a program calendar to define periods for program analysis. This is typically the same calendar as your financial project accounting calendar. The Project Application Administrator uses the Project Calendar Mapping Method to determine how the project’s accounting calendar period maps to the program calendar, if the two are different.

Program Headlines

The Headlines tab enables program managers to:

Select and monitor key performance measures that enable them to quickly assess the overall health of programs.
Create and review action plans.

Watchlist

During analysis, add programs and projects of interest to your watchlist.

Program Currency

The program currency is the currency into which project monetary amounts are converted for the purpose of program analysis. Program managers set their currency preferences by selecting from the currencies enabled for programs in the Program Headlines and Analysis tabs. Program Managers also specify the program currency for stakeholder communication reports. Administrators enable currencies for programs and ensure that currency conversion rates exist between the project and program currencies.

Program Analysis

The Program Analysis tab enables program managers to view the detailed performance of a program or project, including actual cost and effort, nonbillable totals, budget and forecast, commitments, capitalization, earned value, margin, and revenue performance. Program managers can flexibly choose the performance measures they'd like to see while reviewing program progress and financial performance. They can also view and manage their watchlist, notes, and action plans.

Program Performance Measures

Program performance measures indicate the health of a program. Approximately 145 measures are enabled for programs, and 15 are set to display by default. Program managers can specify the measures that they want to see in the Headlines tab. They can also identify the performance measures associated with program progress and financial performance, in the Analysis page.

To reduce the list of measures that program managers have to review, administrators can disable unwanted measures using the Manage Performance Measures task in the Project Financial Management offering. They can also modify measure names and their default display settings using the same task.

Action Plans

Use action plans to track various situations that arise when managing programs. For example, create action plans to mitigate risk that arises from unexpected events, or to quickly correct errors in business processing. Also, use them to help with program administration activities, such as rolling out programs, working with staffing managers, and completing retrospectives.

Project managers and team members can view action plans associated with their projects on the Project Management Issues and My Work Issues pages.

Notifications inform owners about new action plan assignments and progress updates. Project managers and team members can set notification preferences for the notifications they want to receive.

Action plans and their close reasons and resolution commentary contribute to the overall program retrospective, providing insights for both current and future programs.

Action plans contain one or more action items.

Action Items

Action items are the specific tasks included in an action plan. An action item is assigned an owner who's responsible for completing it.

Program Communications

The Program Communications page enables program managers to configure, create, and publish reports. Stakeholders view published reports using the Program Stakeholders work area.

Program Communications Reports and Template

Program managers create program templates to design the content and layout of program reports. Templates contain metrics, text blocks, and other elements, which the program manager can organize and save as reusable content groups, or use as-is in the template.