When monitoring and controlling the project governance framework, the project manager needs to ensure that there are adequate (4) meetings, (5) reporting, (6) risk and issue management, (7) assurance, and (8) project management control processes. This white paper will address the following key elements of project governance:
Project and program governance is a term that is used quite loosely in the project management community. There is a growing trend, that when a project fails, project governance seems to be the root cause for the unsuccessfully executed project.
The four crucial roles that are needed to establish, direct, implement and validate project governance are the following: Sponsor, Steering committee, Project Management Office, and Project manager.
In recent years there has been a gravitational pull toward strong project governance. This has heightened with scandals such as ENRON, Tyco International and WorldCom. Lack of governance in these companies spawned the creation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Muller, 2009).
However, based on experience, the organization should put together a baseline of key elements that are required for project governance based on the project's scope, timeline, complexity, risk, stakeholders and importance to the organization.
Let's do a “double click” on the eight project governance components and the value they add in the real world.
The challenge that many project managers has struggled with is how to define, validate and quantify the return on investment in establishing project governance, as well as determining how to make the project governance framework repeatable but dynamic to the project specific requirements. This is a quagmire that the project management community frequently faces: How do you make project and program governance dynamic and also repeatable?
Overzealous governance models can often annoy the stakeholders, and an absence of project governance can lead to a lack of stakeholder engagement or false escalations. Establishing the right governance model is not a trivial task.
Longevity, monitoring and controlling of the governance plan: These three components come to fruition during the life cycle of your project. The project/program manager needs to make sure the governance plan is implemented throughout the project and must also monitor and control the effectiveness of the governance plan. When monitoring and controlling the project governance framework, the project manager needs to ensure that there are adequate (4) meetings, (5) reporting, (6) risk and issue management, (7) assurance, and (8) project management control processes.
The first step is to identify all the stakeholders. This seems like a daunting and asinine task but it is actually key. If one stakeholder is left out, this can derail the entire project and can have a detrimental impact. Stakeholders can span a broad spectrum.
By strengthening governance, studies have illustrated that it had a proven track record across projects for increasing the likelihood of delivering to time, cost and scope.