(^192) 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know
Establish Project
Management
Governance
Ernani Marques da Silva, MBA, PMP, PgMP
Mairipora, Sao Paulo, Brazil
A PRo jECT CAn InTERACT WITh A WIDE gRoUP comprised of team
members, vendor team members, customers or project sponsors, operational
teams, contract teams, financial teams, and other relevant stakeholders. In this
scenario, where the project involves a large group of people, a variety of situ-
ational things can jeopardize the project.
If you are a software project manager coming from an information technology
background, it may be helpful for you to know how to fit into the larger view
of project management outside your department.
Governance is a management method that is used to develop, communicate,
implement, and monitor polices, procedures, practices, and other acts used to
run a project. Putting an effective project governance structure and procedure
into place helps ensure the project alignment, monitoring and controlling of
threats and opportunities, decision making, and delivery of project packages
that are focused on the project planned. It allows you to appropriately address
the risk and consequently meet the project requirements.
To be effective, the project governance should be planned in advance. Address
relevant items in its framework like the governance goals and objectives; the
structure; the principles; the process, procedures, and standards; communi-
cation; reporting relationships; escalation procedures (what, when, how, by
whom); tools; clearly defined and applied responsibilities and accountabilities;
measurements and criteria for measurements; quality; meeting and steering
committees; audits; and monitoring and control.
Bear in mind that the governance can be affected by a series of factors: envi-
ronmental, sector, industry, company culture, and legislation. For example, in a
functional organization you, as project manager, may be directly reporting to a