Project Governance by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

Governance is the framework of processes that allows power to be employed in a way that exercises the organization's legal rights and ensure that obkigations are fulfilled. Organizations need governance in projects for three reasons.

First, modern organizations invest heavily in project- based work. This is often future focused and relates to future prospects. Corporate governance rules therefore require the organization to ensure that governance extends to their projects, so the tight projects are chosen and controlled.

Second, each project will have a business opportunity to address and good governance and delegation protocols will set the direction for the project. A business case will define the opportunity risks, benefits , resources and budget. This is supported by appropriate checks and governance reviews.

Third, the governance processes internal to the project ensure management of resources is used to address the work efficiently as possible while maximizing effectiveness. These may be supported by defined project management methods and support from associated disciplines.

Good governance will recognize the difference between projects and normal processes. To support both business and project teams there needs to be a framework of delegation, planning , risk management, reporting and review. If the organization runs many projects , efficiency can be increased and communication improved by repeating a defined project management process.

The behaviors that are seen when governance is working may seem unremarkable:
- Work to be done is well defined and carefully communicated to the team
- Roles and authority are defined.
- Budgets/accounts and risk profiles are up to date, reflected in plans and available for assurance reviews
- Progress reports are accurate and timely
- Management is actively deciding whether to continue the project at each milestone and assigning appropriate resources
- Priorities assigned to different projects in the portfolio are used in decision making.

However, when these are directly visible within normal governance structures, the organization has a governance system that is capable of controlling its portfolio of projects and has an indication of its future prospects. Few organizations have achieved this fully.

The pressure on project teams to "get it done" can often lead to short cuts that lead to issues. Some clues that this happening are the planning documents are not up to date, project reviews become meetings with little purpose, riskd and issues are identified but there are no actions taken and no changes to the plan are made, and quality actions associated with completed products are unfinished.

The recognition of the need for good governance of project management and within projects has increased in the current economic climate. The governance best project group has published two guides under the title  Directing Challenge designed for those who wish to review the robustness of their governance arrangement. Guidelines are shown in my book Strategic Management: Building Competitive Advantage, 2nd edition.