Article summary
Program Lead Guide
Overview
Who this is for: you run one program (or task order) day to day. You are the customer's
first contact, you answer for on-time delivery, customer satisfaction, money, and audit
compliance, and you are the only person who can staff the program. You hold Program
Lead (role key delivery_pm). A Deputy Program Lead holds the same role.
This guide is split into five pages. Read this one first, then the others as you need them:
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Deliverables | Every deliverable duty, and the decision guide for how a date gets resolved |
| Program health | Potential issues, issues, touchpoints, growth, CPARS and QASP, money, approvals |
| Team, companies, and subcontractors | Roles, customer contacts, companies, subcontract paperwork, sub reviews, staffing |
| Audits, mods, and closeout | The monthly audit, what to do when a mod lands, period rollover, closeout |
| Checklists | Daily, weekly, monthly, period-end, mod, audit, and closeout checklists |
Your whole job, in one list
- Set the program up: staff the team, load customer contacts, list the companies and their staffing, and set capability percentages.
- Deliver: know every deliverable and its due date, file each one on time with its proof, get the customer's verdict recorded, and fix and resubmit rejections.
- Handle changes to what's owed: waivers, extensions, approved changes, SOW routing, and out-of-scope work.
- Watch for trouble: log potential issues before they happen, convert them to issues when they do, and escalate what you can't fix.
- Keep the customer close: own the CPARS and QASP response and any get-well plan. Ask your Delivery Unit Manager or Growth Operations to record touchpoints and growth opportunities (those need Growth access, which Program Lead does not carry).
- Watch the money: read funding and burn, and work with your finance controller, who records the months.
- Stay audit-ready: run the monthly self-audit, clear corrections within a week, and keep subcontractor reviews current.
- Close out: work the closeout checklist when the program ends.
Your first 10 minutes
- Sign in. You land on your Dashboard. Waiting on you lists what needs you, overdue items first.
- Open Delivery > Programs and click your program. You land on Home.
- Read the four tiles: On-time delivery (this period), CPARS / QASP score, Funding consumed, and SDS audit checks passed. No data yet means nothing is recorded, not that all is well.
- Work down Do Next. The program's Chat page lists your own items on this program under Assigned to you.
- Open People & Relationships > Roles. If the team isn't staffed, staff it now. See Team, companies, and subcontractors.
Common Tasks
The day-to-day jobs, each with full steps on its own page:
- File a deliverable or fix a rejected one: Deliverables
- Approve a teammate's waiver, extension, or edit: Deliverables
- Log or escalate a potential issue: Program health
- Add a teammate, contact, or subcontractor: Team, companies, and subcontractors
- Run the monthly audit: Audits, mods, and closeout
Example Workflow
This guide has no screenshots yet. Program Home, Deliverables, and the sidebar labels
have changed since the published journey frames were captured. Screenshots will be added
when those journeys are re-run with --publish-docs.
Monday morning. Your Dashboard shows two things waiting on you, one overdue. You open the program. Do Next says one deliverable is late and one proposal is awaiting approval. You open Deliverables, find the late monthly report, and click + Submit with the file and your delivery email. You approve a teammate's extension request under Awaiting approval. A staffing gap you logged last month has now happened, so on Potential Issues you click Convert to Issue. You ask your Delivery Unit Manager to log Friday's call with the COR under Touchpoints.
Workflow Expectations
Open Home at the start of each working day and clear Do Next. The Checklists page sets the monthly, period-end, and closeout rhythm.
What you can't see or do
| You can't | Who does it |
|---|---|
| Create a program | Delivery Unit Manager |
| Record financial months or set the funding alert | Finance / EAC Controller |
| Edit the shared registries (companies, labor categories; granted on the organization) | Delivery Unit Manager or Growth Operations |
| Approve your own proposals | A second person on the program |
| Activate a contract on the Activation Gate | A Sprezz admin |
| Grant platform access when the seat is not a subset of Program Lead (controller, contracts, deputy) | Your Sprezz admin |
| Record customer touchpoints or growth opportunities | Delivery Unit Manager or Growth Operations (or an admin who grants Growth access on the program) |
Done outside Sprezz today
- Sending deliverables and delivery emails to the customer. You send them, then record them here.
- File-naming standards for deliverables and contract documents. Nothing checks names.
- Invoices, timecards, cost increase requests, and EAC preparation.
- Government onboarding tracking, PMR deck preparation, and internal peer reviews. You can file a PMR deck under Docs with the PMR category.
- Program description, work type, technologies, and tools fields. Sprezz has no fields for these.
Who to ask
- A new program, or a change of lead: your Delivery Unit Manager.
- Contract changes, mods, and periods: your contracts team. See the Contracts Team Guide.
- CPARS, QASP, and audit scoring: your quality team. See the Quality Team Guide.
- Access: your Sprezz admin.