/coordinate-program — Make the pieces fit

When to use

When several projects or teams must deliver one outcome together; when a dependency is slipping across a team boundary; when the portfolio needs re-sequencing after a capacity or funding change.

Dispatches

program-manager (lead) + portfolio-analyst (collision, constraint and register data) + resource-manager (supply) + delivery-monitor (current project health).

Inputs

All relevant project plans in knowledge/projects/, knowledge/portfolio.md (collisions, constraints), knowledge/capacity/ and knowledge/resources.md (supply), knowledge/raid-log.md, knowledge/roadmap.md, knowledge/cadence.md, knowledge/governance.md (what needs a sponsor's decision).

Steps

1. Map dependencies explicitly across teams and projects — direction, owner on both sides, and a needed-by date. A dependency without a needed-by date is a hope. Record them in knowledge/raid-log.md at Level = program.
2. Find the program critical path — the longest dependent chain across projects, which is rarely the critical path of any single one. Protect it, and watch the near-critical chains that become critical the moment it slips.
3. Sequence by value, dependency and capacity, using the constraint from knowledge/capacity/ rather than aggregate headcount. Show the trade-off you made and what you gave up — the reasoning is the artifact's whole value later.
4. Limit system-level WIP. Too many concurrent items is the most common cause of slow delivery and the least often diagnosed: everything progresses, nothing finishes. Track items in flight against a deliberate limit and prefer throughput over utilization as the health signal.
5. Surface the collisions no project can see. Two projects needing the same scarce team in the same window are each individually green. Escalate cross-team risks that no single project owns.
6. Align integration and a shared Definition of Done so increments actually combine into a releasable whole, and name the integration points and who owns each.
7. Present options with consequences where the call costs money or belongs to a sponsor per knowledge/governance.md — defer, descope, re-sequence, add capacity — rather than deciding for them.

Methods

knowledge/methods/project-management.md (dependencies, critical path, program coordination, tailoring), knowledge/methods/portfolio-management.md (collisions, WIP, the three altitudes), knowledge/methods/resource-management.md (constraints and lead times), knowledge/methods/roadmapping.md (sequencing and communicating direction).

Output

A coordination artifact at knowledge/programs/YYYY-MM-DD-<program>-coordination.md — dependency map, sequencing with its rationale, integration plan, WIP position, and the decisions needed. Cross-project entries in knowledge/raid-log.md at Level = program. Log sequencing and trade-off decisions to knowledge/decision-log.md. Follow standards/document-standards.md.

Optional sync

If knowledge/integrations.md configures Jira/Linear, offer to reflect dependency links on the affected items. Files remain source of truth; skip if not configured.

Created by Colin Beck<br> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckcolin/<br> GitHub: https://github.com/link7373