Understanding Project Governance
Organizations continue to struggle with the concept of project governance. In fact, executives continually struggle with the correct balance between unwanted bureaucracy and not enough structure. I recently had the chance to sit down with Darshana Patel, PMP and Vice President of Project Governance at OnSite to discuss project governance- steps to create it and techniques for avoiding organizational resistance.
Darshana, how is it critical to define the term project in your organization? Isn’t it universal?
Matt, In an organization, it is critical to define “project” and gain critical consensus. Every organization has a different definition or flavor of “project.” In some organizations, a project is considered anything that is not operational and therefore discrete in nature. In other organizations, a project is an initiative that exceeds certain budget or time thresholds or has particular types of risks. It varies by organization and often depends on the culture, process maturity, and acceptance of project concepts.
What advice would you give to organizations currently trying to implement a project governance structure?
The first step is to define “governance.” This term is bureaucratic and disempowering. The key is to demonstrate the value of any governance structure as a means of facilitating project success. This correlates to cost savings and cost avoidance. The next step in implementing a project governance structure is to assess the value. I’ve seen organizations where time to market was the critical driver and minimal process was all that was needed to meet this objective. Governance could be lean and simply supportive in this environment. The third step is to determine the type of governance structure that makes sense for the culture. Imposing on established practices can have negative and long-term repercussions. Often, it may be easier and more culturally-accepted to build a project management practice that offers support to areas of the business as needed without being mandated. This provides a non-threatening introduction to project governance and offers the ability to generate “wins” and value that can demonstrate the benefits and need for project management process evolution.
Any suggestions for dealing with organizational resistance or as you mention in your article the “cultural ripple”
People are afraid of change. This is human nature. Organizational resistance is a guaranteed dimension of rolling out any type of project management or governance framework. To deal with this resistance requires the soft skills that seasoned leaders possess – charisma, influencing, and diplomacy. The level of dialogue to overcome resistance must be sincere and requires stepping into the other person’s world. Why is he/she resistant? What’s at the root? You may be dealing with an entire division’s resistance. Get to the core. Address resistance on a case-by-case basis and create the key allies by demonstrating value of project management with example wins from the organization or through case studies from similar environments. The simple fact is, everybody is tuned into WIIFM (what’s in it for me?).
Matthew Sheaff currently serves as the Director for the Center of Project Management at The American Strategic Management Institute. For questions and or comments, he can be reached directly at Sheaff@Managementweb.org.
