Programme plan

Purpose:

Used to design the overall programme and then to track and control progress. The Programme Plan is a key control document for the programme. It enables the Programme Manager to ensure that a planned and controlled environment is established and maintained throughout the life of the programme. The Programme Plan provides the basis for tracking the impact of each project on the programme's overall goals, benefits, risks and costs. It also enables the Programme Manager to monitor the dynamics of the inter-relationships between each project and to act when a delay in any one project might jeopardise the work of others.

Suggested content:

• Project information including the list of projects (the Project Portfolio), their target timescales and costs, and the dependency network showing the dependencies between the projects.
• Summary of risks and assumptions identified against successful completion of the Plan. Detailed assessment of all risks and associated contingency actions is covered in the Risk Register/Log
• Overall programme schedule showing the relative sequencing of the projects, the grouping of projects into tranches, milestone review points.
• Transition Plan showing when the outputs from the projects will be delivered and what transition activities will be required to embed the new capability into business operations.
• Monitoring and control activities, information requirements to support this, performance targets and responsibilities for the reporting, monitoring and control activities.  

Source information:

• Blueprint
• Benefits Management Strategy
• Benefit Profiles
• Benefits Realisation Plan
• Business Case
• Project Portfolio  

Notes:

The principal objective of planning a programme is to organise the work in a way that accomplishes the programme's objectives and delivers the benefits. One of the major challenges in running a programme is to reconcile project objectives and accountability with the overall programme goals and programme level consistency and control.

Programme planning is not simply project planning on a larger scale. Planning a programme requires the integration of various strategies so that the Programme Plan reflects not only the schedule of projects within the Project Portfolio, but also the way the programme is to manage quality, risk, communication and benefits. The strategies for the approaches to each of these provide a major input to developing the Programme Plan, including:

• what level of detail the Programme Plan should go to, and what tools will be used to monitor and maintain the Plan
• what the programme and project level activities will be, and when they will be done, to meet the quality requirements for the programme
• what information will be distributed to whom and when as part of achieving the required communications for the programme
• what risk management activities will be required and when they will happen
• how and when the benefits are going to be tracked and monitored during the programme.  

Further information:

See the briefing on programme management

Detailed reference: Managing Successful Programmes