Governance in Context

Governance is a term used to define the processes implemented to provide management oversight, guidance and compliance to policy and procedures.

There are essentially 2 types of governance:

• Corporate Governance; and
• Project Governance

Project Governance is complementary to Corporate Governance

Corporate Governance is normally applied to the whole organisation and generally at a high level. Naturally it has a major focus on business-as-usual operations.

Project Governance, on the other hand, is exclusively applied to the delivery of projects and change within an organisation. While it falls within the overall corporate governance framework it is not the same. For it to be effective, Project Governance requires a different skill set from that of Corporate Governance.

Project Governance Framework

The project governance framework may involve one or more Project Boards, Steering Committees, Project Control Groups or similar with representatives drawn from the project and corporate stakeholders.

Depending upon the nature of the work, the project governance framework may be applied at portfolio, program and project levels and covers all contracting modes.

All project governance frameworks are delivered by processes, people, tools and supporting collateral.

There is no common approach to establishing the governance team structure or the team members but the level of governance to be applied is typically driven by cost.

The Governance arrangements are sometimes documented separately and sometimes embedded into the Project Management Plan. When Project, Program and Portfolio Accountability Modelling (P3AM®) is performed, Caravel has identified a significant improvement in project success rates.

Caravel’s Services

Caravel offers a range of consulting and delivery services across the project governance specialisation including:

• Drive capital and operational performance
• Drive revenue and increase profit
• Dynamic corporate and project governance
• Project governance organisational design
• Project governance requirements definition (right-sized project governance)
• Project governance operations
• Project governance assurance
• Project governance effectiveness measurement and reporting tools
• Project governance accountability modelling (P3AM®)
• Project governance visibility management