When we speak of program management (or project management) "success" starts with speaking about DONE in units of measure meaningful to the program participants.
This language is a powerful source of clarity or confusion. Learning to speak clearly, concisely, and in words meaningful to all the participants is not only important it is critical. Here's the basis of starting to speak about the Probability of Program Success.
This means:
- What are the Planned Accomplishments for the program to keep it moving toward the end goal and at the same time measuring increasing maturity of the deliverables.
- Defining the criteria for each of these deliverables in units of "physical percent complete."
Define a set of nouns and verbs in phrases are used to speak about project success:
- Define Needed Capabilities
- Define Technical and Operational Requirements
- Performance Measurement Baseline
- Execute the Performance Measurement Baseline
- Continuous Risk Management
The conditions for success include:
- A good plan
- The ability to follow the plan
- A comprehensive, well documented, and accurate description of the program, its measures, and the plan
This last condition creates the needed credibility. It's having a plan and following the plan that is critical success factor.
Stating that adapting to change rather than following the lan is the preferred approach simply reveals the navity of the planning process in any credible project management domain. The Plan is the strategy for success. As such it MUST adapt to change.
