Project Governance

Often inadequate, or thoroughly structured but poorly understood, sound project governance is critical. Numerous descriptions and methodologies exist, and while agnostic in this regard we believe the following definition universally applies:

Project governance is the use of institutions, structures of authority and even collaboration to allocate resources, coordinate and control activity and risk on a project or within a business environment.

While this definition is lovely, we also happen to believe structure needs to be more than something that looks pretty in a PowerPoint slide or a laminated wall chart. At Analytica we can help you build project governance structures that do the following (things not generally visible on a PowerPoint slide):

• Define the structures of authority and relevant mandates, accountabilities, policies, standards and associated processes.
• Critically evaluate investment proposals for optimal use of funds and scarce resources.
• Control the financials.
• Define the ‘desired business outcomes’ (end states); performance measures, mechanisms and overall value proposition.
• Monitor EVERYTHING: schedule progress, stakeholder commitment, milestone achievement, leading indicators of failure...
• Measure everything you monitor, and understand HOW you measure, as it is easy to be fooled by things like averages. After all, would you cross a river because it is on average 4 feet deep?
• Did we mention control the financials?
• Protect the project, it's staff and the organisation behind it from risk through enterprise-wide risk management. Do not blindly listen to the consensus as to where (and what) the risks are; do your own observation and thinking. What will hurt you is what you expect the least. And finally, we try to ensure you don't make the greatest inferential mistake: "this event never happens in MY market/industry." Most of what never happened before in one market or industry has happened in another. The fact that someone never died before does not make him immortal.

Our approach to dealing with the points mentioned above has been developed by practitioners in local and international markets.

Contact us for an exploratory discussion.