Structuring the Governance Model

[Former Member]

It is important to structure a governance model for an IT program to align the business vision to the IT projects and to foster better decision making when addressing challenges in processes, technology and people. It is highly recommended that this structure be put in place when an organization is moving from a decentralized culture to a centralized culture, the business is driving the change, major change is expected in business processes, and to incorporate visible leadership support.

What have your challenges been on past projects where you were tasked with structuring a governance model?

[Former Member]

Hello Judith,

Here are some of my experiences in structuring governance:

Like Claudia already stated: executive support is a must. Without an formal owner of the change in the end management will not give it the right priority and nothing will be decided and therefore never happen.

In implementing a (new) governance model I roughly see two stages:

1. The actual change and implementation project

2. The new organization

Ad.1. During the implementation a steering committee is in place to handle all formal decisions and validate new policies. Parallel to this, my experience learns that implementing a new governance model needs involvement of all stakeholders in an organization: from the end-user of systems to executive level. The project structure should reflect the hierarchy of the responsibilities in the organization so every key stakeholder has a peer counterpart in the change process. It also ensures you get all major issues addressed and the right commitments given. Finally, a good communication plan will manage expectations. As a part of this, a central support contact for the change program is very helpful to catch and counter all rumours that are always present when changes are taking place.

Ad.2. Governance is embedded in job responsibilities defined for the new organization. I will not elaborate on this further, as this is dependent on the type of organization which is implemented as a result of the change. The central project support contact is now evolved into a transparant issue resolvement office. Because this support also was involved inthe change program itself, historic information on why and how is available to provide a better service.

I hope sharing this experience is helpful to you.

Regards, Edo

[claudia_mandelli]

I think that involving high-level executives into a Steering Committee and ensuring their support is a key activity when setting up project governance.

Steering Committees can be a powerful instrument to ensure that the project evolves in harmony with the business environment. One of the challenges I have found recently is ensuring the appropriate level of engagement. In some cases, executive engagement in Steering Committees may not be enough, in other cases may be too much. For example, the Steering Committee for my client has recently requested weekly meetings. All high level executives have consistently been attending and are engaged in the discussion, often asking tough questions which require extra effort to answer. However, this level of support also means excellent attention and speed in escalating and resolving issues. When a project has a very aggressive schedule, a very high level of engagement is necessary to reduce and contain risk.

From a change management perspective, involved and supportive executives are a very powerful instrument of change, setting the example for all middle and local management, and making it easy to engage the organization in business readiness effort.

In terms of governance, additional Change Boards may need to be instituted in the business for specific purposes, for example managing data changes or updates and ensuring that the master data remains clean. I believe the challenge is to ensure that the business representatives understand the need, accept and own these specialized boards. Policies and procedures may need to be created or changed in order to support this effort.