The Essential Guide to the Program Management Lifecycle

In the program definition phase, the object is to establish the reason for the program and define goals and objectives. In this phase, you also acquire final approvals for the program, set up the program structure, and assign roles.

“An organization has short- and long-term goals,” says Yad Senapathy, founder and CEO of the Project Management Training Institute. “They take these goals and objectives and translate them into an organizational strategy. This organizational strategy typically could spin into multiple sets of portfolios, then have the programs within them. The program then looks up to this organization strategy, looks up to this portfolio, and starts with this one big phase called the program definition phase.”

“The definition phase is centered around the purpose of the program objectives,” says Jake Carroll, the founder of Create Kaizen. “What’s the mission of the program? It’s really answering all of the questions: why are we tackling this versus some other issue?”

“Just at the beginning,” Caroll says, “standing up a program may feel a little bit like project management in that you have some sort of defined scope that you need to get buy-in and investment for. You need to have a little bit of a sense for how long it's going to take to build this.”

Learn more with our comprehensive guide to best practices in program management.

The program definition phase has two sub-phases: program formulation and program preparation. Below is detailed information about these two sub-phases and some tips on how to approach them:

Program Formulation Sub-Phase

Some experts consider formulation tasks to be part of pre-planning before the program definition phase. Other experts, however, consider those tasks to be part of the program formulation sub-phase within the program definition phase. In either case, program formulation involves important steps in establishing the program and setting it up for success.

The main components of the program formulation sub-phase are as follows:

• Create the Business Case: Early in this sub-phase, you will need to make a compelling business case for setting up the program. Why will the cost of the program be worthwhile to the organization? How will it serve the organization’s strategic objectives?
  
  Carroll explains that the business case document needs to answer an important question: “What is the net benefit for the consumer or the business? Otherwise, why would any executive want to sign off on the development of that program?”
  
  “You need to understand what is the business case for even creating this specific program,” says Senapathy. A strong business case, he goes on, will explain, “Here’s the specific business that we have. Here are the overall expected benefits that we need to address as part of this program. The program is trying to deliver these strategic initiatives.”
  
  Use the following strategic goals checklist to help create a program that serves your organization’s needs. This checklist includes five steps to help you ensure that your program stays focused on that ultimate mission. 

Download Program Strategic Goals Checklist
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• Secure Program Financing: After you establish the business case, you’ll need to secure all necessary approvals to finance the program.
• Create Program Charter: The program charter will include details on program objectives, potential benefits, and scope, as well as how the program aligns with the organization’s strategic objectives.
  
  “A program management charter is an authorizing document,” Senapathy says. “A charter is saying: Here are certain objectives that the program wants to change. Here's a sponsor who wants to stick in a certain amount of money to this, and the sponsor is putting their weight behind this program. And here's this rough sketch of scope, schedule, and finances. Now we are blessing it. In other words, the program manager is official. The program is official. The objectives are official.”
  
  For additional resources, see our collection of program management templates, including a program charter template that will help you identify the objectives of your program.
• Perform Initial Study of Scope: Assess and set out the scope of the program. What work and areas will it and will it not cover?
• Perform Initial Study of Cost: Assess your expectations for startup and ongoing costs of the program.
  
  The types of questions you might ask at this stage, Carroll says, include, “What types of resources are we going to need? Who are we actually taking those resources away from?” He adds, “The cost isn't just the people that I'm gathering. It's also the opportunity costs on whatever they're going away from. It’s a double investment.” 

• Program managers must also think in these early phases about short- and long-term costs of projects within the program, says Rick Cherf, associate professor at Washington State University and founder of Total Construction Services, Inc. “A building may last anywhere from 40 to 100 years, depending on the quality of the construction. The first 2 years are the design and construction. Then you manage that facility for the next 38 years. So facility maintenance and maintenance and repair — all of those things are important.”
• Perform Initial Resource Estimate: Along with costs, you will want to determine which resources you can make available to the program.
  
  “That could be planning the execution and what that program actually looks like,” says Carroll. “Who’s going to be involved? What resources might you need internally? That could be resources like people, or it could be resources like money. You also need to develop some sort of timeline for the program.”
  
  If your organization has a program management office, use them as a resource to help with this step and other steps in the formulation sub-phase.
  
  Learn more about program management offices and how they help programs succeed with our comprehensive guide.
• Perform Initial Risk Assessment: Identify the likely risks to the program and how you will set up a structure to manage those risks.
  
  “When we bring this team together for a program analysis,” says Cherf, “one of the questions you ask is: What’s going to keep us awake at night?” Your team should perform a detailed assessment of all those possibilities. “Then we put those up on the board and start talking about the critical issues we have to deal with,” Cherf continues.
  
  Cherf shares one story about a program he worked on while building the $2 billion Tacoma Narrows Bridge across Puget Sound in Washington. Program leaders found that 60 percent of the cables were in danger of rusting. “That means you’d have to buy 1.6 times as much cable, which would cost about $20 million more. So they got an insurance program from Lloyds of London, and they also talked to the cable manufacturers to make sure they put a certain kind of coating around the cables. All those little things could impact you. You talk to the people who are responsible for those portions of the program, and you ask them: ‘What’s going to bite us? What do we need to do?’ So when it happens, we're not sitting around going, ‘Oh my God.’ We’ve already thought about that.”
• Create Program Plan: The program plan is more detailed than the program charter. It may include plans for governance, communication, resource management, and other details. This step can take place during the formulation sub-phase or during the program preparation sub-phase.
  
  “A program management plan is a how-to,” says Senapathy. “How do you go about implementing the whole program? How do you interact with one another? When a change occurs, is there a system to follow? How do you manage scope within the program? How do you manage the schedule of the program? How does financial management occur within a program?”
  
  “I like to use the word framework,” says Cherf. “It’s a framework. We’re putting together the assumptions, the deliverables, the ‘what do we need to do?’ What kind of framework do we want to set up to make sure that we're operating in the right?”
    

Program Preparation Sub-Phase

In this sub-phase, your team might finalize the program plan, set up a detailed governance system, and better define the program’s architecture. The purpose of this sub-phase is to get your program ready for launch.

The following are the main components of the program preparation sub-phase:

• Establishing Program Governance Structure: Finalize a structure that your organization will use to manage the program.
• Developing Benefit Realization Plan: Determine how you will assess and measure benefits of the program.
• Identify Program Team: Decide who you want on your program team. Identify potential employees for internal transfer or determine if you will need to find external hires.
• Detail Program Objectives: Write program objectives to help focus the program’s work.
  
  “This is answering the ‘why,’” says Carroll, “and includes internal operations goals as well as external business goals. This also helps with scope creep — when stakeholders want to add different nuances that they prefer but that may not help the original vision and purpose.”
• Define and Sequence Activities: Define activities that are important for the beginning of the program. When you complete those early activities, move the program forward to the next required activity.

Carroll points out that the rigor of program definition and early phase analysis will differ between bigger, more established companies and smaller, younger companies.

“I think people pick and choose the components of program definition analysis depending on the needs of their company,” Carroll says. “I did what I would consider a fairly robust lifecycle management for a growth stage company that had a trajectory toward enterprise-level status in the future. The rigor that you need to stand up a program for a company that's in a hyper-growth stage, that’s much more rigorous than for a startup.”