The Standard for Program Management

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.

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.