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Project Success Starts with Project Governance

November 22, 2009 @ Herding Cats from Glen B. Alleman


All the recent noise about PM 2.0, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, then back to PM 2.0 again is supposed to be able increasing the probability of success for projects. There is no other real purpose for project management - not matter what the tools vendors, processes vendors, or soth sayers want us to beleive.

If the probability for project success is not increasing, then why are we spending talent, time, and treasure on all this things?

So show do we actually start increasing the probability of project success (PoPS). First we acknowledge that the tools are secondary. Probably thirdary. The number one thing that drives the success of projects - mostly IT projects - is making a connection between the project and the business strategy that the project supports.

Steve Romero has a post about this topic. You can read his ideas. Good ideas. Now comes the challenge. How to connect business strategy with increasing PoPS? Well one way is to define the strategy of the business in such a way that it can physically be connected to projects. There is no "one best way" to do this and the topic of business strategy has a long history of being rancorous and misdirected. Balanced Scorecard is one of the better frameworks for addressing the project governance issues. 

These issues start and end with "why are we doing these projects." There are lots of reasons, but each reason must have a connection with a stratgey in the scorecard. No connection, no valid reason for the project. One of two things then need to take place. Get a reason, or drop the project. Even non-discretionary projects have a reason. They live in the business operations section of the scorecard.

Here's the starting point for making that connection. Once you arrive at the right side of the diagram, you can switch to the project definition mode and start identifying the capabilities needed to fulfill the strategy, goals, CSFs, and KPIs. These capabilities of course lead to requirements, the performance measurement baseline, the execution of that baseline and the continuousness risk management processes performed throughout the project life cycle.


This article is syndicated from Herding Cats . The original article is available here. Read more in Herding Cats, Project Management News .

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