Program Management: Planning Your Program

Course Overview
Hi everyone! My name is Jeremy Jarrell, and welcome to my course, PgMP - Planning Your Program. I'm a Pluralsight author and mentor who helps teams deliver great products. Are you considering kicking off a new program but aren't sure how to plan for such a large effort? In this course, we are going to learn how to create a detailed plan to kick off your program so you can be sure that your program is starting off on the right foot. Some of the major topics that we will cover include how to create a detailed work breakdown structure for all the elements in your program and how you can use this work breakdown structure as a starting point for detailed schedules for each of your program's component projects. And we'll learn how to aggregate each of the schedules of your program's component projects into a single schedule, which can then serve as a baseline of execution for your entire program. And, finally, we'll cover how to define clear success criteria for your program so you can be sure that everyone is in agreement about what will make your program a success. By the end of this course, you'll know how to create a detailed plan for your program, which can be used to set your team up for success all the way through your program lifecycle. Before beginning this course, you should be familiar with basic project management concepts, such as project schedules, as they are discussed in PMI's project management body of knowledge. I hope you'll join me on this journey to learn how to create a successful plan for your program with the PgMP Planning Your Program course at Pluralsight.

Kicking Off Your Program
My name is Jeremy Jarrell, and welcome to Kicking Off Your Program, part of the PgMP - Planning Your Program course of the PMI PgMP learning path. In this module, you'll learn how to review your key program planning artifacts with your stakeholders to ensure that everyone's expectations for your program are in alignment, as well as how to clearly define the responsibility for each of your program tasks across your entire program team. And you'll learn how to create a clear definition of success for each component of your program. Once your program has gained authorization from your organization and program funding has been secured, your next step is to begin to prepare to kick off your program. A successful program kickoff is your opportunity as a program manager to review your program charter and your program roadmap with your key stakeholders to ensure that everyone is in agreement about your program objectives before execution begins. But your program kickoff is also your opportunity to work with other members of your program team to clearly delineate everyone's responsibilities during program execution, as well as to set clear success criteria for the delivery of each component project of your program. Investing the time to remove any ambiguity about program responsibilities, as well as each project's success criteria at the outset, can save you from costly mistakes later and help improve the chances for the successful delivery of your program.