Project management plan
AlphaHow the programme will actually be run: decision rights, one plan, the change route, and what each gate has to prove.
What it is for
To make the programme legible — what is being spent, what is being decided, what is slipping, and who is accountable — before any of those become contested.
- Audience
- Steering committee, workstream leads, assurance.
- The decision it supports
- Whether this programme can be governed at the speed it needs.
Inputs — 7 blocking
Blocking means the document cannot be honestly drafted without it. The rest can be left open and marked as such.
Scope baseline and exclusions
From /scope
The areas in scope, the streams they sit on, the modules dragged in, and what is explicitly out.
Delivery
Governance structure and decision rights
In the library
Forums defined by what they decide, not by seniority, with terms of reference, quorum and cadence.
Delivery · Programme Governance
Delegation mapping
Only you have it
Financial and scope authority traced back to the organisation's own delegation instrument, so approvals inside the programme are valid.
Finance · Programme Governance
One integrated plan
From /scope
A single schedule across workstreams with dependencies named. Not one plan per workstream stapled together.
Delivery · PMO & Programme Governance
Gate criteria
In the library
What each gate has to prove, agreed while nobody is under pressure to say yes.
Delivery and assurance · PMO & Programme Governance
Resourcing and backfill
Only you have it
Named people at named percentages, with backfill funded and confirmed by the managers losing them.
Business owners · Digital Transformation Readiness Checklist
Change control route
In the library
How scope, budget and schedule change deliberately: who raises, who assesses impact, who approves at which threshold, and how cumulative impact is reported.
Delivery · Change Requests
Draft around these if needed
Risk, issue, decision and action registers
In the library
One of each, across the programme, with single named owners and visible ageing.
Delivery · Actions and Decisions
Reporting cadence and audience
Only you have it
What each forum gets, and what it is expected to do with it. Papers ahead of the meeting, with a recommendation.
Delivery · Programme Governance
Assurance arrangement
In the library
Who checks the programme independently, and who they report to. Assurance reporting into the programme director is not assurance.
Sponsor · Be a Hero
Decision latency baseline
Only you have it
How long a decision takes today, measured before mobilisation. A programme needs them faster, not slower.
Delivery · Empower People
Bring a scope
Several of these inputs can be answered from a scope — the processes in play, the artefacts they demand, the interfaces that straddle the boundary, and the order the work falls into. Pick the areas you intend to change and come back.
Scope it first →Outline
- 01Scope, exclusions and baseline
- 02Governance, decision rights and delegations
- 03The integrated plan and critical path
- 04Gates and what each one proves
- 05Resourcing, backfill and capacity
- 06Change control and the baseline discipline
- 07Risk, issue and decision management
- 08Reporting, assurance and escalation
- 09Closure: what has to be true for this to end
What separates a useful one from a compliant one
- —Every forum has stated decision rights, including what it cannot decide.
- —There is one schedule, not one per workstream.
- —Gate criteria were set before anyone was under date pressure.
- —Escalation has a service level, so raised issues cannot simply sit.
- —The plan says what would make the programme stop.
The rest of the set