From his years of experience and an exhaustive study of the program planning literature, Mitchell Springer has ascertained that the program planning process is made up of four key elements--program organization planning, schedule planning, cost planning, and performance planning. Program organization planning is the process that establishes the planning and program organizations and the definition of the work to be performed. Schedule planning provides the time frame for resource allocation and establishes a baseline for the current status and forecasts of completion dates for scheduled work. Cost planning established a preliminary budget to use to track and compare against actual costs. Performance planning is the identification and subsequent documentation of the technical performance requirements.

The key to understanding and quantifying programs is coming to the realization that program progress is both sequential at the micro-level and nonlinear at the macro-level. The four primary phases of the management process, planning execution, analysis, and adjustment may be performed at the same time because different activities within the program advance at varying rates. However, at the micro level, for example, a needs assessment must be completed before its subsequent end product can be produced. The end products of all additional, sequential steps cannot be generated if this first micro level step, the needs assessment statement, has not been completed. However, work on all macro level steps can proceed without the completion of the initial micro level step. The author also provides several tools to help process evaluation, including sample questionnaires, a research observation form, and data mapping instruments.