IT Project & Programme Management Guides
16 guides covering the artefacts an IT delivery programme runs on — what belongs in each, how it is used, and where it usually goes wrong.
These are written from inside real delivery programmes rather than from a syllabus. Each guide explains one artefact in enough detail that you could build your own version from scratch, and includes the parts that go wrong: the point of no return nobody dates, the RAID log everyone abandons in week six, the hypercare period that never formally ends.
Go-live, cutover and release
Cutover Plan: The Seven Sections, and the Five Things Teams Forget
What a cutover plan contains: timeline, go/no-go criteria, rollback, contacts, comms, freeze and post-cutover verification — plus the f…
Read the guide →Cutover Plan vs Cutover Runbook: What's the Difference?
A cutover plan sets out the approach; a cutover runbook is the timed, task-level script executed during the window. When you need each,…
Read the guide →Go-Live Checklist: What to Confirm Before You Release
A go-live checklist covering technical, data, business, operational and governance readiness, plus go/no-go criteria and the checks tea…
Read the guide →How to Run a Go/No-Go Meeting
How to prepare and chair a go/no-go meeting: agreed criteria, who decides, what evidence is needed, how to handle waivers and how to re…
Read the guide →How to Write a Rollback Plan for an IT Release
What a rollback plan must contain: reverse sequence with timings, rollback triggers, the point of no return, and who has authority to c…
Read the guide →Hypercare After Go-Live: Scope, Duration and Exit Criteria
What hypercare is, how long it should last, who staffs it, and the exit criteria that stop it running forever. A practical guide for IT…
Read the guide →Data Migration Planning: Dry Runs, Reconciliation and Sign-Off
How to plan a data migration for an IT go-live: profiling, mapping, dry runs at full volume, reconciliation tolerances, sign-off and wh…
Read the guide →Governance and reporting
RAID Log: What Goes In It and Which Columns Actually Get Used
What a RAID log is, what belongs in it — risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies — the eleven columns worth having, and why most RA…
Read the guide →RAID Log vs Risk Register: What's the Difference?
A RAID log covers risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies; a risk register covers risks only. What each is for, when to use both, a…
Read the guide →Steering Committee Report: One Page That Gets a Decision
What belongs in a steering committee report — status, decisions required, risks, financials and dependencies — and how to structure it …
Read the guide →What Should Be in a Project Status Report?
What a project status report should contain, how long it should be, how often to send it, and the reporting habits that destroy credibi…
Read the guide →Dependency Tracking: Managing What You Don't Control
How to track cross-team and cross-project dependencies: the fields that matter, how to spot the commitments that will slip, and why dep…
Read the guide →Programme and PMO
Programme Governance: The Structure That Actually Works
How to design programme governance: which boards, which decision rights, what reporting cadence, and how to avoid governance that consu…
Read the guide →PMO Templates: What a Small PMO Actually Needs
Which templates a small or new PMO needs first, in what order, and which ones can wait. A practical starting set for portfolio, governa…
Read the guide →Project Manager vs Programme Manager: What Changes
The difference between a project manager and a programme manager: scope, decision rights, what each is accountable for, and which artef…
Read the guide →Project Closure: Handover, Lessons Learned and Benefits
How to close an IT project properly: the closure checklist, lessons learned worth reading, handing benefits to their owner and transfer…
Read the guide →Templates for these artefacts
Each guide ends with the DeliveryDeskCo template that matches it. The full catalogue holds 31 editable Excel and PowerPoint templates across governance, go-live, portfolio, budget and closure.
Browse all 31 templates →