In today’s environment, Projects fail for many reasons like Bad communication, Lack of planning, poor quality control, Missing interim deliverable, Poor budget management, Poor project management.
The following six key issues that led to project failure: Functionality issues, substantially late, Quality issues, High-cost variance, canceled after launch, Rejected, or not implemented for other reasons.
Most of you will agree that a 20%–30% project failure rate is not out of the norm. To minimize the risk and increase the probability of project success, you need an effective project governance framework.
As the stewards of taxpayer dollars, we need to manage project risk through a well-defined and proven governance process.
Calvin Rhodes CIO, State of Georgia
An effective project governance framework has four components:
- Guiding Principles
- Project Excellence Processes and Metrics
- Project Portfolio Management
- PPM Solution
Guiding Principles
These Guiding principles will provide you the overall guidance for managing projects:
- Visible leadershipfocuses on the following three key roles that are required for effective project governance: executive sponsor, business owner, and IT executive.
- Defined tacticsaddress the boundaries of the project, the execution/control activities, and stakeholder issues resulting from changes to business processes. The three components are scope, plan, and change management.
- Effective communicationsare probably the most underutilized component in executing projects. Have effective communications need to be constant, incorporate a 360-degree view of the project, and be realistic. Make sure you should be identifying the benefits to businesses that are linked to the project. Remember, it is all about achieving business outcomes. Everyone will latch onto this common thread.
Project Excellence Processes and Metrics
Project excellence processes and metrics will provide you the guidelines and measurements that to be used to oversee and manage the governance and execution of the projects. You make sure the processes are rigorously defined and administered. You should utilize the best PPM tool that could influence the project’s success if not governed by project excellence processes. You should also develop a set of governance and execution metrics to provide the quantitative measurements to ensure process adherence and successful project execution.
Project Portfolio
The project portfolio includes all projects in the IT organization and is categorized into three distinct buckets: sustain the projects to maintain the business, operational projects will run the business, and strategic projects innovate to the business by providing new products and services that will drive margin and return on investment (ROI).
Project Portfolio Management Tools
PPM tools manage the activities, financials, schedules, and resources of the project. There are many Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tools on the market today. Make sure you chose the one that fits best with your organization’s culture, provides the flexibility required to effectively manage your projects, and is easily configured for use to provide the Dashboard, KPIs, Data Gathering of Project Data for Governance Analysis, Predictive Analysis, Quantitative Analysing project request and improving Project Manager skills.
Summary
A well-thought project governance process will minimize project risk to improve the project’s success. Your project governance process should include these guiding principles, project excellence governance processes and metrics, project portfolios, and a project portfolio management (PPM) tool.
Guiding principles include visible leadership, defined tactics, effective communications, project excellence, and metrics. Project portfolios should be organized by categories and viewable across different categories, characteristics, and strategic alignment. Sustain, operational, and strategic is one category grouping.