Effective project governance in 6 steps

To scale their activities, companies have no other solution than to optimize the management of their projects. Improving day-to-day operations therefore becomes essential to gain competitiveness and conquer new markets. 

This is where project governance comes in, not to be confused with project management, which is more limited in scope and stakes. Indeed, project governance involves the definition of procedures and establishes human and financial resources. As a result, it is positioned as an essential method for the sustainability of companies.

In this article, learn what project governance is, the challenges it represents, and the steps you can take to help you implement it in your organization.

What is Project Governance?

Project Governance: Definition

Defined by the business sociologist Jean-François Chantaraud (2012) as " the set of rules and methods organizing the reflection, the decision and the control of the application of decisions within a social body ", project governance remains in fact a method of management and organization.

Consisting of a set of processes, it defines the organization at the global level of the company. Project governance makes it possible to set up the right environment for the effective management of a project portfolio.

One of the main characteristics of project governance lies in its strategic dimension. Indeed, defining project governance implies taking a position in the strategic direction to be followed. Management teams then have a heavy responsibility: that of choosing projects that align with the company's overall strategy.

What is the Difference Between Governance and Project Management?

While project management and governance both involve the implementation of projects within a company, they differ in their dimension.

As project governance is a global methodology, it uses project management as a tool to achieve its strategic goals.

Diagram of a project governance

What is the Main Goal of Project Governance?

Guaranteeing a certain level of quality thanks to an efficient structuring and organization, project governance responds to real challenges. In addition, its implementation has many advantages.

Ensure Alignment from Operational to Strategy

Aligning projects with the company's strategy can be complex. However, the implementation of a precise project governance will make it possible to work on this coherence, while taking into account the company's development objectives .

In addition, project governance is particularly useful for reconciling the sometimes divergent interests of the different stakeholders of an organization.

Facilitate Decision-Making

The definition of project governance is based on concrete figures from the company's operational activities.

A reliable analytical vision will help provide all the necessary elements for informed decision-making. It should also be noted that this analysis must be based on relevant financial indicators to be defined strategically.

Optimize Resource Management

Resource management is a particularly complex issue to manage in companies. Indeed, the lack of visibility on availability sometimes complicates the smooth operational running of projects.

By defining project governance upstream, you will improve your long-term vision, which will allow you to better prioritize projects to be developed.

Ensuring Sustainability

While project governance represents a significant investment within a company as it requires the involvement of teams and management, its benefits are nevertheless significant.

The implementation of project governance contributes to the sustainability of the company in many ways:

• the smooth running of activities is facilitated,
• productivity is increased tenfold,
• profitability is increased,
• Autonomy is promoted, allowing you to retain your talents. 

Improve Communication

Project governance helps to streamline the flow of information. This is because each role is defined in advance with transparency. Obtaining information becomes more accessible, as each employee knows perfectly well who to contact. Communication flows are thus simplified, and time savings considerable.

Project Governance Benefits

A Performance Measurement Tool

With greater visibility into the company's various activities, project governance helps streamline project decision-making . Indeed, doubts can sometimes emerge and teams may be led to ask themselves: should we launch this project? The postponer? Reframe it? Re-prioritise it? Abandon it? 

Project governance then contributes to answering this type of question by allowing performance to be measured, thanks to project management indicators, thus facilitating decision-making.

Creating a project management dashboard will help you with this task.

 

Respecting Costs, Deadlines, and Expected Level of Quality

By clarifying procedures and improving productivity, project governance is a formidable method of ensuring that activities run smoothly. Accurate planning makes it easier to meet costs and deadlines and helps deliver a high-quality product.

Successful projects help to increase customer satisfaction. The company can take advantage of opportunities, which in turn increases its turnover.

Tools like project management software provide this long-term visibility and alert you when a project deviates from budget.

Visualize the performance of your projects in forecasting

Gap analysis: compare the planned activity with what was produced and scheduled. Visualize the financial impacts of your scenarios ( resource planning, purchases etc.) and get notified.

Discover project management with Stafiz

Risks Anticipation

Implementing project governance within a company contributes to the anticipation of risks in several ways.

Indeed, the definition of procedures takes into account the identification of risks : the assessment of their probability, their consequences and above all their management.

Anticipation can also take the form of continuous monitoring, complemented by the generation of reports, which are essential tools for effective project governance.

In addition, risk anticipation is made possible by clarifying those responsible and making available the necessary resources to manage risks, both human and budgetary.

 

Stafiz helps you anticipate risks. Predictive KPIs tell you about future deviations before they happen. This allows you to make decisions to correct the trend.

Discover our reporting tools

The Key Steps to Set Up Project Governance?

Involve Management Teams

While this step may seem obvious, its essential nature justifies that we put it forward. Indeed, project governance is only made possible by the deep involvement of the company's management. The latter must understand the importance of its implementation on a global scale, as it involves:

• policies ,
• prioritization,
• strategic decisions. 

The finance department must also join the collective effort by helping to define KPIs related to budget management. In addition, she will have to help provide resources consistent with the company's vision, both in terms of personnel and budget and equipment.

 

Define Procedures

Project governance is, by definition, the implementation of procedures.

To generate real impact, it must be clear and framed. Thus, the beginning, the end and the control methods must be perfectly defined.

On a day-to-day basis, this can take the form of optimal operational planning, for example by defining the schedule and theresource planning teams in a precise way, thus considering the management of unforeseen events.

The Stafiz platform allows you to integrate the most efficient project management procedures

• Opportunity management and upstream optimization
• Simple and powerful project planning and re-planning: resource planning, costs, subcontracting, phases, tasks
• Continuous performance monitoring: time entry, variance analysis, etc.
• Automatic invoicing, with due dates and follow-up of unpaid invoices

Stafiz project management ERP

Team Trainings

While project governance involves procedures, it also touches the heart of the company: the human being.

A perfectly defined, structured project governance that does not take into account its teams would be doomed to failure. Thus, it is necessary to recruit but also to train talent, while assuming a committed corporate culture.

This will include strategic planning, which will make it possible to organize resources in such a way as to: 

• anticipate recruitment needs,
• planning the implementation of projects,
• train teams.

 

Stay Flexible

While the implementation of procedures and the anticipation of risks make it possible to facilitate the sustainability of the company, flexibility remains an essential value.

Indeed, project governance must be scalable according to the hazards. Thus, the company must be able to react quickly by adapting resources, processes, schedules, and even management teams.

An excellent way to make project governance evolve positively is to collect opinions, both from employees and customers, in order to move towards improvement.

 

Are changes to schedules by email or chat too time-consuming?

Reshuffle your schedules easily: postpone, cancel, reallocate to other employees easily.

 

Communicate

Caring and constructive communication remains the key to optimal project governance. Listening, interpersonal skills, but also autonomy and a sense of responsibility are all necessary qualities in the implementation of project governance.

Establishing effective communication involves setting up relevant channels for sharing information, thus ensuring the relay between the teams to discuss the progress, the problems as well as the decisions taken and feedback.

 

Setting up project governance remains a complex process as its challenges are strategic. If project management concerns a micro vision, project governance implies a macro vision, thus affecting the globality of the company and its sustainability.

Optimal project governance will improve performance, quality delivered and profitability. However, it will be necessary to invest in order to achieve these results, both in the structure, in the human aspect and in the organization of information.

However, let's keep in mind that each company is unique and must find its own method, adapting to its constraints and valuing its most important asset: its teams.