technical-program-manager

Technical Program Manager

When to Use

• Coordinate a multi-team technical initiative with shared milestones
• Map dependencies, critical path, and integration points
• Maintain RAID log (risks, actions, issues, decisions)
• Run launch readiness or go/no-go reviews
• Produce weekly program status for leadership or steering committee
• Resolve cross-team blockers without owning the technical design

When NOT to Use

• Write BRDs, user stories, or process maps → business-analyst
• Choose canary vs blue-green or write cutover runbooks → deployment-strategist
• Implement pipelines, GitOps, or on-call → devops
• Own data platform roadmap or data governance → data-manager
• Author service RFCs or code → senior-software-engineer, fullstack-software-engineer
• Platform product roadmap for IDP → platform-engineer
• Architecture decisions, ADRs, design review → senior-system-architecture
• Strategy, business case, operating model → business-consultant
• Technical discovery, solution architecture, RFP response authoring → solutions-architect

Related skills

Need	Skill
Release strategy and rollback design	deployment-strategist
Pipeline and environment operations	devops
Requirements and business cases	business-analyst
UX scope and design handoff	product-designer
Engineering design and RFCs	senior-software-engineer
Data program roadmaps	data-manager
Security/compliance program gates	compliance-engineer, cybersecurity
System architecture and ADRs	senior-system-architecture
Strategy and business case	business-consultant
Incident ops: SEV, on-call, postmortems	incident-management-engineer
Board resolutions, entity, corporate closing	corporate-counsel
Launch and stakeholder messaging	communication-lead
Developer training program rollout	developer-education-lead
Exec/VIP and community customer escalations	community-executive-escalations-program-manager
Data center design and facility execution	data-center-design-execution-lead
Multi-site DC portfolio planning and steering	data-center-portfolio-planning-execution-lead
M&A diligence, signing, closing coordination	transaction-manager
Coordinated vulnerability disclosure program	technical-program-manager-security-cvd
Customer solution design and delivery handoff package	solutions-architect

Core Workflows

1. Program charter

Define before execution:

• Objective and measurable outcomes (not output lists)
• Scope: teams, systems, in/out
• Timeline: phases, hard dates, external dependencies
• Roles: DRI per workstream, escalation path
• Success metrics and definition of done

See references/program_charter.md for charter template.

2. Work breakdown and dependencies

1. Decompose into workstreams (each with one DRI)
2. List deliverables per workstream with dates
3. Build dependency graph (finish-to-start; flag circular deps)
4. Identify critical path and buffer on that path only
5. Mark integration milestones (API freeze, env parity, dress rehearsal)

See references/dependency_risk.md for dependency types and RAID format.

3. Operating rhythm

Cadence	Audience	Purpose
Weekly	Workstream DRIs	Blockers, date slips, dependency asks
Biweekly	Sponsors / leads	Scope, risk, decision needs
Pre-launch	Launch council	Readiness checklist

• One source of truth for status (doc or tracker—not duplicate spreadsheets)
• Decisions logged with owner and date; no re-litigating closed calls

See references/status_reporting.md for status template.

4. Risk and issue management

• Risk: may happen → mitigation + trigger
• Issue: happened → owner + ETA + comms plan
• Escalate when: critical path slip > agreed threshold, scope creep without sponsor, unresolved cross-team conflict

See references/dependency_risk.md for RAID columns.

5. Stakeholder communication

• Status: RAG per workstream, changes since last week, asks
• No technical deep dives in exec updates—link appendix
• Align messaging before external comms (customers, support, legal)

See references/stakeholder_comms.md for audience-specific formats.

6. Launch readiness

Gate checklist before production:

• All critical-path items complete or explicitly waived by sponsor
• Rollback/runbook owned (deployment-strategist + devops)
• Monitoring and on-call briefed
• Support/docs updated
• Go/no-go with named approvers

See references/launch_readiness.md for full checklist.

When to load references

• Charter and phases → references/program_charter.md
• Dependencies and RAID → references/dependency_risk.md
• Status and steering → references/status_reporting.md
• Exec and sponsor comms → references/stakeholder_comms.md
• Go/no-go → references/launch_readiness.md