A program is a group of projects or activities that work together to achieve a larger goal. Often, programs are a part of a portfolio, but they can also be standalone initiatives. They’re all tied together by a common vision, and they are managed as a group to get the desired outcome.
Project management defines a program as “the coordination of multiple projects to realize benefits that otherwise would not be possible.” In other words, it’s a set of related initiatives that are all managed together under one umbrella.
The benefit of a program is that it can deliver long-term value to the business, while still being managed in a tactical way. A program is the glue that enables complex initiatives and transitions to be effective, and it demands a competent level of oversight from its managers.
There are two primary ways to define a program: by its outcomes and by its scope of work. The first is the most intuitive: it’s a collection of projects that all contribute to an overall goal and are all managed together. The second is the more technical, and involves understanding the specific goals of each initiative within the program.
What is the difference between a program and a project?
A program is a collection of projects that are all managed together, and it’s the most efficient way to achieve an overall goal. In this sense, a program is a lot like the way a portfolio is managed, except it’s much more complex and has longer-term implications for the business.
What is a computer program?
A computer program is a series of instructions that tell the computer how to perform certain tasks. The instructions can be in a document, on a disk, or in memory. The computer then gets one instruction at a time and then follows it until it completes the task or until it runs out of memory.
If you were to ask a friend how to do something, it might be difficult for them to give you a clear set of instructions. You might need to write down a set of commands and then give them to your friend, one by one. Then your friend might need to wait for you to finish each command before they can move on.
However, a computer program is a very different thing to a set of instructions that you might write for your friend. In a computer program, you can give the instructions to the computer, and it will take a set of mnemonics and assemble them into a sequence of commands that the computer will follow to perform its task.
For example, you might write a computer program that will scan Facebook posts looking for the most common word in the text. This is a very useful and accurate way to find the most popular words in a large volume of content.
You might also want to write a program that will count how many times a particular word is used in a given amount of text. This would be a great tool to have when analyzing data from Facebook.