Defining projects and programmes
It is clear that some artefacts are produced before others. For example the mandate comes before the brief. However, it is simplistic to imagine the mandate is the first artefact to be produced overall. Recall that role of the mandate is to allow senior management to 'contemplate' whether the project idea therein contained is a goer or not. To make this evaluation, the mandated idea needs to be compared to something. That 'something' is the enterprise vision (blueprint) against which any number of mandates may be compared. There is no way of knowing at the outset, how many projects will result to satisfy any given enterprise vision. It is rather a question of the magnitude of the task, plus the resources, timescales, and dependencies.
Generally smaller projects are to be favoured over large ones (in terms of the number of people working together). Shorter projects should be defined over longer ones due to people loosing focus over time - a year is a reasonable period of time. These considerations will impact on the absolute number of projects that result.
Lastly, you must consider how projects should be grouped together into programmes. A programme is a set of inter-related projects.
A strategy is a suggestion as to how the vision will be satisfied. The strategy is a statement of the end-to-end sessionless problem landscape that includes high level requirements that define scope. Given the strategy is acceptable in principle, its satisfaction may be divided into projects for implementation reasons. This process of division obviously creates dependencies between projects.
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Figure: The vision statement is satisfied by the strategy. The strategy is satisfied by projects. Projects are grouped into programmes. Once the shape and structure of the projects is known the remainder of the programme documentation can be produced.
If there is only one physical project, the process depicted in the figure above does not require a programme be defined. Otherwise, multiple projects may be combined into a single programme, or if there is a basis of commonality and strong dependencies between sets of projects, multiple programmes may be defined. In either case, a programme structure must be created to monitor progress across programmes and within projects for the purpose of reporting to senior management.