PMP: Project Management Professional (PMBOK 6 & 7)Retired

Program planning uses a high-level roadmap with milestones and preliminary estimates based on the information available, including applicable historical information. Known high-level requirements can therefore be prioritized and estimated at the milestone level while interproject dependencies and priorities are refined as program information becomes available.

Impediments should be evaluated for their impact and prioritized so that the critical blockers affecting project objectives receive prompt attention and an appropriate removal or mitigation strategy. Sponsor involvement is appropriate for escalated impediments that require sponsor authority, but criticality must be established first.

Scope changes and their schedule effects must be managed through formal change control. Initiating a change request enables the proposed scope modification and timeline adjustments to be assessed, approved by the designated authority, and incorporated into the project baselines.

A significant adverse cost variance calls for root-cause analysis of project performance so the source of the variance can be understood and appropriate corrective action determined. Updating the original budget solely by the current cost variance bypasses that analysis and baseline change control.

Prioritizing deliverables by business value ensures that the most important capabilities are completed first. Frequent releases make those capabilities available to the customer earlier, reducing time to realized value without arbitrarily shortening the iterative delivery process.