Master Planning

The term multi-project management or Supervision Programs management refers to Master planning.

A Master planning consolidates all projects of one organizational unit implemented concurrently.

Indeed, if projects are not related with each other, do not affect each other, or do not share the same business goal, then there is no need to group these projects under a program or a portfolio. However, Executive managers and Project Manager Officers (PMO) may need consolidated views to monitor and track key programs, products, and projects of the organization.

Master Plannings are primarily reporting tools to help executive managers keep track of the progress of a subset of projects, products or programs of interest.

Example

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Executive Management must maintain a sharp view of the organization and a general view of programs and projects to ensure convergence on objectives. Projects and Programs can be interrelated or not, and be part or not of the same Portfolio.

Supervision approach

In contrast to the planning for programs or products, Master plannings are exclusively meant for reporting and monitoring purposes.

Upon their construction, a list of individual programs, products, and projects are identified based on the need for consolidating and viewing these elements together whichever is their common pattern, if any.

Using Master planning involves conducting a series of reviews of the individual project plans, and then creating a digest of their contents. During this process, conflicts between projects may become apparent so that resolution action may be triggered.

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The Master planning is not used for directing work and allocating resources. Individual project plans, instead, address these tasks. It may be helpful to think of the Master planning as a seismograph that seeks to detect and measure the potential impact of any trembling in the ground underneath the programs and projects effort.

Managing a Master Planning can provide Executive managers an easy-to-use view of key projects within the organization.