A program is a project made up of sub-projects or workstreams, all working together to achieve a broader goal. Each sub-project is often run by a different project manager. Being a program manager can be tough because not only do you have responsibility over the program as a whole, but you also have to manage multiple project managers, each of which may have their own way of doing things.
An easy way to help your PMs to manage things consistently and for you to help manage how they deliver is to have them all use RAID logs – ideally the same template. Then you can schedule a regular RAID log review meeting to coach your PMs and keep things coordinated across workstreams.
Not only can your RAID review be a way to provide oversight on workstream delivery, but you can aggregate the top issues, risks and decisions from individual workstreams into your program level RAID log. This won’t be all you need of course, because there are always program level items which are not specific to any single workstream. So, you should be running your own Program level RAID as well.
For Programs specifically, it can be very useful to have a separate Dependencies log for tracking inter-workstream dependencies. These dependencies are an important topic for frequent reviews with your workstream leads and will help avoid a lot of miscommunication and planning issues.
Sidebar: For Programs specifically, it can be very useful to have a separate Dependencies log for tracking inter-workstream dependencies.
