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2
Learning the Ropes: Understanding
the Culture, the Customer, and
the Program Capabilities
In this chapter, we will discuss the environment of the program and how
an eective program manager (PM) can use it to his or her advantage. We
will also cover how the program environment can be used to avoid prob-
lems that can derail the project.
ink for the moment of the program as a system that is living within
a set of other systems—the Company, the Customer, and the Team.
Figure2.1 illustrates that intersection of systems.
At times the program will interact individually with each of these
regimes, but it always is a part of these three. e better ...