Yes and no. I went to a Marketo Roadshow and there was one woman who gave a presentation on engagement programs that was honestly fantastic - definitely recommend going to the Marketo Roadshows if you are able. (Pretty sure I remember it being free, too). The way she was talking about them made me realize that I was thinking of engagement programs too linearly and that engagement programs in Marketo are meant more to be utilizes for various stages.
Here is a link to the presentation materials she gave, but I'd take a look specifically at slide 11.
A contact would start in a "Demand Gen" stream getting Emails 1, 2, 3 and so on. Based on the triggers you determine, you move them to the "Educate" stream when they do the desired action to get the emails in that series - same goes for the Interest and Consideration streams. That's just one example - slide 13 groups theses "stages" a bit differently, so I you're not pigeon-held to one specific campaign goal/structure.
(I hope the slides helped and aren't confusing without a presenter - I just remember finding the "you move them from stage to stage" feedback not very helpful until Moni, the presenter, was able to give specific examples to help conceptualize its use.)
The main point being the engagement programs I think are intended for campaigns that occur in two directions rather than just a straightforward linear campaign. (Side-comment, I've gone the way of using default programs with smart campaigns to send out emails for a simple welcome series because of this. This thinking also makes sense as to why you can only have 25 active engagement programs in Marketo at a time - they would be more complex and programs like that probably aren't utilize at a scale that would require more than 25 at one time for a single business.)
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