Programs are top-level projects that serve as the parent or umbrella project to one or more child projects. Master projects serve as parent projects to child projects. Use programs to view combined actuals and effort for all of the projects contained within them. In this way, programs provide an important top-down summary view of an organization goals and the plan to meet them.
Though a program is a project and shares some of the same functionality, it also differs in a few significant ways. For example, you cannot create nonmilestone tasks at the program level, nor can you staff a program. And while you cannot financially enable a program, you can create a financial plan for it and view plan data in a graph format. In addition, you can view the combined actuals and other totals for all of the projects in a program.
It is important to understand the differences and similarities between programs, master projects, projects, and subprojects. The following table provides a summary of the differences and similarities:
|
Attribute or Ability |
Program |
Master Project |
Project |
Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Displays sum of values from subprojects |
Yes |
No |
N/A |
You can view the combined actuals and effort for all of the projects in a program. You cannot do from master projects. |
|
Assign Staff Members |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
You cannot assign staff at the program level. The roles that display on the program team staff page are read-only and are aggregated from the program subprojects. The project role assigned to a team member is displayed. If a resource does not have an assigned team member role, then their name appears individually in the list. You cannot edit this list. |
|
Add Participants |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
You can add participants to programs, master projects, and subprojects. |
|
Create and apply a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Because you cannot staff or add nonmilestone tasks to programs, you cannot create and apply a WBS to programs. |
|
Use Tasks |
Milestones Only |
Yes |
Yes |
You can add milestones to programs, but you cannot add key tasks or task estimates. |
|
Use Planning features |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
You can create budgets and forecasts for programs and projects. |
|
Connect to Scheduler |
Read-only |
Read/Write |
Read/Write |
As it does not contain actuals of its own, a program can only be viewed as read-only in a desktop scheduler. For example, Open Workbench and Microsoft Project. |
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