The Handbook of Program Management: How to Facilitate Project Success with Optimal Program Management, Second Edition 2nd Edition

Over the past 3 months, I have read several books on Program Management. Most focused on the PgMP standard, were theoretical, and read like textbooks. This work, by contrast, has commonsense, practical advice for Program Managers and was fun to read. Multiple times I thought to myself - yes, I can use this day-to-day on the job.

I have been a project manager for several years and just recently was promoted to a business unit manager (area manager). I am a PMP, but the company I work for does not have a PMO or even recognize formal project management processes. It's a great company that uses tried and true procedures for managing projects, but they could improve their projects by improving their processes.My new job is mostly program management. I can't bring formal project and program management to the whole company, but can to my business unit. I was looking for some good direction for this, and came across this book. There is not a lot out there on program management, but this book had great content and reviews.This book is amazing! It will be some I keep by my desk all the time. I was struggling at my new position trying to integrate a PMO into an organization with existing policies and procedures, and putting this plan on paper. As I read this book, the ideas just fell into place. My staff was excited to see a clear and written plan for our business unit and the defined roles and responsibilities. This book helped me to see the areas I needed to focus on.I now have a clearly defined path forward that is already improving our PMO. If you oversee project managers in your organization, or have the ability to influence those that do, this is a must read for you.

Well written with clear explanation of what program management is and what is expected of program manager.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand program management, particularly those who have recently transitioned (or are looking to transition) to a program management role.This book gave me great insights into the types of things to be conscious about when taking a program view versus a project view.The concepts and examples given are practical and based on common sense.Although numbers and statistics can be useful to some extent, greater emphasis/focus is given in understanding the big picture and context when delivering programs of work.Many of these concepts I found were intuitive and made alot of practical sense - I recently started managing a program of work, and I could relate a number of situations and examples described in the book. A number of things I suspected were true were clarified and crystalised in the chapters of the book.The book also talks of the pitfalls of spending too much time on excessive detail when working as a program manager - it's more important to focus on the overall health of the program rather than getting caught up in uneccessary details.It's the best book on this topic I have read and I am highly likely to be referencing this book in future.

As a new program manager, I ended up highlighting passages on nearly every page of this book. And what a relief to see that an expert in the field explained many of the vexing realities that I''ve experienced as a lead, project manager, and contributor over the last decade plus. Lines like "the amount of administrative functions can be overwhelming... nonadministrative project managment functions are much more important." Or "Above all else, you need to deal aggressively with problem stakeholders." How often has that happened? Too many to count. I'm actually shocked that a Handbook Of Anything would be this useful and at the same time, a decent read. But it's both.I highly recommend this book to any new program manager, to any aspiring project manager, or to anyone who wants to understand and improve the programs they work on.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for valuable guidance around Program and Project Management. Over the years I have had the privilege of attending seminars and presentations by Dr. Brown. Just like in person, Dr. Brown makes dry information interesting, relevant, and applicable to the profession. In the book, he does a great job at analyzing each of the key focus areas around Program Management and offering real world scenarios and recommendations to address these in your work environment. I have already found myself implementing a few of the recommendations in our organization and will be referring back to this book in the future.

This is one of the best, most practical books I have ever read. I constantly refer to it in real-life scenarios that I experience every day. I have taken so many of these concepts and applied them already. My only regret is that I would have bought this book earlier. I wish there was more from this author. I also found his writing style easy to read and process.

Great book - so relevant to today's Program / Project Managers in any type of business. Many of the chapters’ content struck close to home and I was constantly relating the content to my present work situation / environment. Chapter 5 in particular had me putting markers on many pages that hit most closest to home.In Chapter 10, Figure 10-1 relates to Little's Law (Cycle Time = WIP / Average completion rate) . This is absolutely true isn’t it? Try to do too many projects consuming the same resources; essentially everything slows down.Thanks to Dr. Brown, we all have an easy to use desk reference anytime we are struggling with how to improve our programs and or projects.