And how the ITS PMO applies them to its projects
While researching Project Governance to ensure the ITS Project Management Office (ITS PMO) wasn’t missing anything, and to help create a new Project Governance Page on our website, I found this interesting white paper1 on the subject that included a section on “Eight Governance Components and Their Applicability to the Real World.” As I read through them, I realized that we have been mostly complying with them and that we too (UConn and the ITS PMO), are definitely in the real world.
So, it got me thinking…
Project governance is about providing oversight, assurance, and control functions over projects and creating an environment to ensure that the project does all the right things the right way. So, let’s take a look at the eight key governance components and see how the ITS PMO applies them to its projects – in the real world.
Notes:
1. ⇒ The original white paper text is shown in black.
2. ⇒ The ITS PMO’s application of the governance components is shown in blue.
3. ⇒ The ITS PMO project templates are referenced below in Bold Blue. Click the button below to gain access to all the ITS PMO templates.
- Governance Models: When defining an adequate governance model that complements the organization, the project manager needs to take into consideration the amount of rigor that you want to incorporate. 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. 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.
There should be a simple tool that does a quick analysis based on some of the above indicators defining how aggressive your governance framework needs to be, and which components are mandatory.
⇒ The ITS PMO intends to keep the processes and management of its projects consistent and easy to use; simple, but not overly so.
⇒ We use the Project Intake Document, which is normally completed in the first one or two meetings with the project sponsors. Here, we collect all the project’s key elements described above, and more. We record the business case, critical success factors, objectives, scope, risks, timelines, deliverables, dependencies, key members, and how we’ll measure the return on investment (ROI).
⇒ From this information, the ITS PMO can determine the intensity of the governance framework needed and complete a one-page Project Governance Document for issue escalations.
- Accountability and Responsibilities: Defining accountability and responsibilities is the core of the project manager’s tasks. Not having a definition for accountabilities and responsibilities will have a direct impact on the effectiveness of meetings, the change control process, risk assessment, and the communication plan. When defining accountability and responsibilities, the project manager needs to define not only who is accountable, but also who is responsible, consulted, and informed for each of the project’s deliverables.
⇒ We use a RACI Matrix that spells out who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.
⇒ For larger or more complex projects, we also use a Roles & Responsibilities Template that includes a project team organization chart.
- Stakeholder Engagement: When establishing the foundation for your governance plan, understanding the project ecosystem is mandatory. The first step is to identify all the stakeholders. This seems like a daunting task but it is 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. These include but are not limited to the project steering committee, PMO, sponsors, suppliers, government boards, the project team, business owners, and so on. Stakeholders are essentially anyone who can be impacted by the project deliverables. The project manager needs to define who the stakeholders are, what their interests and expectations are, and most important, how to communicate with the stakeholders.
⇒ The ITS PMO identifies all the stakeholders during the project intake process. We also create a Microsoft Teams site as a central repository of project information, and we add all the stakeholders as members of the team.
- Stakeholder Communications: The communication plan needs to be developed once all the stakeholders have been identified and their interests and expectations have been defined. A well-formulated communication plan delivers concise, efficient, and timely information to all pertinent stakeholders.
⇒ The Communication Plan Template is a key artifact of the ITS PMO and is completed during the Planning stage of the process. It lays out who receives what information, how and when it’s delivered, and who’s responsible.
- Meetings and Reporting: Once the communication plan is identified, there needs to be a good balance of meetings and reporting. This needs to be
defined to ensure that each stakeholder understands the mode and content of communication, frequency, owner/receiver, communication milestones, and decision gates. In addition, communication needs to be crisp, precise, and to the point.
⇒ The Project Manager sets up the initial meetings for the functional and technical teams as required. There’s also a Project Status Report Template that is sent to upper management on a predefined regular basis. This summarizes the project with lists and color coding for scope, schedule, budget, and critical success factors.
- Risk and Issue Management: It is no secret that projects are riddled with risks and issues. It is difficult to forecast what is going to occur, but a lack of preparation will put the project team further behind the eight ball. At the beginning of any project, there needs to be a consensus on how to identify, classify, and prioritize the risks and issues. Quite frankly, how you handle the risk or issue is more important than the issue/risk itself.
⇒ In Microsoft Teams, all ITS PMO projects have a Planner tab for risks and open issues. Anyone on the team can open a ticket when an issue or risk is identified. These are discussed during the weekly status meetings and members can be assigned to remediate the issues or mitigate the risks.
⇒ The ITS PMO also utilizes a Risk Log Template to keep track of the risks that are not easily mitigated.
- Assurance: Project assurance ensures that risks and issues are managed effectively and defines the metrics that foster the delivery confidence of the project. A vital component of assurance is devising the metrics that would give visibility into the project’s performance. Some of the metrics include but are not limited to adherence to the business case; effectiveness of the change control and risk analysis process; the ability to monitor deviations in project scope, time, cost, and schedule; and quality assessment and tracking accuracy of the project plan.
⇒ Each project manager meets with the ITS PMO Manager weekly and updates the ITS PMO Status of Major Projects document that gets emailed every week (or two) to all of ITS. This status contains both a high-level and detailed section. The high-level section contains color coding for the overall status, scope, schedule, and budget for every active project. In addition to the color coding, the detailed section also includes the detailed weekly progress and a list of open risks and issues for each active project.
- Project Management Control Process: This is the simplest component but the most challenging one to execute because of ongoing checks and balances. The monitoring and controlling process has the purview of all tasks and metrics associated with the project and measures performance against the baseline scope, budget, time, and resources. This is not a one-time assessment; the project manager needs to be constantly measuring the performance and taking timely action on any deviations.
⇒ In addition to the ITS PMO Status of Major Projects document that gets emailed twice a month, we are introducing an Artifacts/Milestone Tracker integrated with each project in Teams. Each artifact or milestone will be assigned to the relevant ITS PMO member, who will update the status until completion. The tracker’s status will be summarized in a group report in Planner, providing a quick overview of each project’s progress. We will be implementing the Artifacts/Milestone Tracker early in 2025 as the new Microsoft Planner is being rolled out in Teams.
⇒ Additionally, the project manager always monitors the project plan to ensure that project milestones are being met.
After thoughts…
First, I want to thank anyone who made it through this entire post. The title doesn’t exactly attract a wide audience. But for me, the process of identifying and documenting the ITS PMO Project Governance has been both eye-opening and rewarding.
It was eye-opening because I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into at the start. After all, who gets excited about diving head-first into the world of project governance? However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that we were doing most of the right things, even though we did not explicitly define them.
It was rewarding because we came away with an independent validation of our existing processes. Like I said in the beginning of this post, “the ITS PMO intends to keep the processes and management of its projects consistent and easy to use; simple, but not overly so.” Validating our project governance model kept with that intention. We now have an explicitly defined Project Governance Page and new artifacts to support the process.