A more recent article on Project Governance can be found here:

Best Practice: Project Governance Framework

Wikipedia defines project governance as follows:

“Project governance is the management framework within which project decisions are made. Project governance is a critical element of any project since it provides a framework for the accountabilities and responsibilities associated with an organisation’s capital investments (projects).”

Therefore, the role of project governance is to provide a decision making framework that is logical, robust and repeatable to govern an organisation’s capital investments. In this way, an organisation will have a structured approach to conducting both its business as usual activities and its business change, or project, activities.

Absence of Governance

In today′s business world, the absence of “governance” is equal to fraud, mismanagement and even scandal.
Project governance is fundamental to ensuring project success and control.

A Project Governance Framework

Guy Jelley, CEO of Post Vision Technology, believes that the most desirable scenario is creating a project governance framework that allows projects to be fluid and move ahead – as opposed to those that are hindered by too much red tape and unnecessarily scrutinised at every opportunity – but, to implement this framework together with a mechanism that provides visibility on current projects and their governance status, so as to understand and manage risks.

“The framework should provide a logical, robust and repeatable management decision making process, with the purpose of governing an organisation’s projects. And, although I advocate that project governance should be simple and straightforward in order for projects to flow, its importance must not be underestimated,” he says.

According to Jelley, project governance is underscored by the overall strategy of a business and, consequently, project managers must understand the objectives and vision of a business in order to understand and appreciate the project governance framework.

“That is, analyse what the governance processes should be delivering and measure these against the business value that the implementation and monitoring of these provide. The bottom line is, your project governance framework is dependent on your organisation’s holistic requirements and should thus be business- and not technical oriented,” says Jelley.

“Important, however, is to be aware that project governance is not a part of IT governance, but is a set of rules and regulations under which projects fall, irrespective of their type,” concludes Jelley.

Elements of good project governance

Wikipedia lists elements of good project governance which include:

• A compelling business case, stating the objects of the project and specifying the in-scope and out-of-scope aspects
• A mechanism to assess the compliance of the completed project to its original objectives
• Identifying all stakeholders with an interest in the project
• A defined method of communication to each stakeholder
• A set of business-level requirements as agreed by all stakeholders
• An agreed specification for the project deliverables
• The appointment of a project manager
• Clear assignment of project roles and responsibilities
• A current, published project plan that spans all project stages
• A system of accurate status- and progress-reporting including time records.
• A central document repository for the project
• A centrally-held glossary of project terms
• A process for the management and resolution of issues that arise during the project
• A process for the recording and communication of risks identified during the project
• A standard for quality review of the key governance documents and of the project deliverables

The setup of a project governance framework during the Initiation Phase of any project, is considered a Best Practice to ensure project success.

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