Customer Reviews

The Standard for Program Management

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Complex and very high level. Doesn't give practical examples to program managemment. The concepts are easily understood but the implementation detail is very limited. I'll be looking for a book that complements this standard with practical examples and advise in applying the concepts of the standard.

As a program managers' guide this is an excellent book. Given a few hours of thought you can follow it along to a decent program office roll-out.

As a study guide for the PGMP exam, which is supposed to be based on the standard, you're going to be pretty confused. The PGMP exam is nothing like the PMP exam, with its rigid focus on what processes are sub-sets of other processes. For the exam, the main take-aways from this standard are its constant references to: the business-benefit link, to the need for governance, and of course PMI's constant (and usually, tragically, ignored) pleas for the use of a WBS. Those are the only parts you will recognize again on the exam.

Of course you need to read the standard before taking the exam. Ironically, however, this standard is actually considerably more useful as an operational program management reference - which, of course, is what the standard is really meant for. So kudos to the folks who put it together.

I do not expect examples in a Standard. But it's too short and incomplete. For example, there are no tools and techniques for the processes. Also there are some silly errors which could have been corrected by a careful copy editing. I hope PMI does a better job in the second version of this standard.

Project Management Institute issued the second revision of their program management standard in December 2008. The second edition is a significant improvement over the first edition published in 2006. Detailed changes are noted in an Appendix A to the standard, but in general, this is a totally new document, not merely a revision. The standard is now 324 pages, versus 109 pages, themes were deleted, knowledge areas added, and other major modifications were performed.

PMI's The Standard for Program Management - Second Edition is linear in approach, with very generic good practice recommendations. It assumes that the entire scope of the program is known early on, which is not true in all programs, or it plans for an R&D type phase that will answer the outstanding questions. The standard is very non-prescriptive in nature, allowing the implementing organization to create the best implementation method. This type of standard is helpful, but requires significant organizational expertise to help the implementation process.

For those who are looking for a methodolgy to implement see Office of Government Commerce, (2007), Managing Successful Programmes: Delivering Business Change in Multi-project Environments Book, 8th impression, The Stationery Office, Norwich, UK. It is a very good method of implementing program management in an organization and is in line with PMI's standard.

Contrary to my own belief, this is actually not bad of a guide for program management. I definitely used this book and some of the references to create a deck that I presented to senior managers. They found the content to be very useful.

I think PMI did a great job in this book than the PMBOK, which is definitely a good bed time material. This book is well written and flows nicely. I didnt expect that I will actually like this book and use it for anything beyond just knowledge but I found that some of the graphics are helpful and can be used for presentations. That to me along with the deep and thorough practical examples made this book a 4 star.

It is a basic and fundamental book of Program Management. I can really recommend it if you want to buy a handbook of Program Management.

If you have procrastinated so long in taking the PgMP Exam that you had purchased the first edition to study, time to go back to the well and purchase the second edition, because you are going to need it. Changes are clearly outlined at the front end of the book, and they are significant. This is probably required reading (2nd Edition) before investing the time, effort and money required for testing for PgMP certification.

The Second Edition is light years ahead of the First Edition--I've read both. I received my PgMP certification this month. Since there were NO STUDY GUIDES available anywhere that covered the material presented in the Second Edition, I simply read this standard along with PMI's Program Management Professional (PgMP) Examination Specification. These two books and 15+ years of practical program/project management experience helped me pass the exam.

The Standard for Program Management by Project Management Institute describes process groups and knowledge areas for Program Management. The book is a good material for the first version of the standard.

I used this book as my top study material to present and pass the PgMP test. The book provides you the foundation to pass the test.

If you are a Program Manager by profession you will be able to relate the described process groups and knowledge areas with many of your day to day activities in a program.

Program Governance, Benefit realization and Stakeholder Management are themes that occur across the life cycle of a program. These themes are very important to support the successfully completion of programs and provide incremental benefits to the organization executing the program.

I am looking forward for the next version of the standard.

Although very sparse, this does suffice to set the foundation for the basic knowledge areas required for prgram management. Whether it is worth the price is subject to debate because it does nothing to prepare the reader for the PgMP Exam. Since most PgMP study guides also include this basic info, I would advise that purchasing this in hopes of using it for exam prep is probably a waste of money.