Principle 1-Ensure A Single Point of Accountability For The Success of The Project: The

Project governance is the management framework within which project decisions are
made. Project governance is a critical element of any project since while the
accountabilities and responsibilities associated with an organisation’s business as usual
activities are laid down in their organisational governance arrangements, seldom does an
equivalent framework exist to govern the development of project’s capital investments
( Sharma, Stone and Ekinci 2009 ). Project Governance extends the principle of
Governance into both the management of individual projects via Governance structures,
and the management of projects at the business level, for example via Business Reviews
of Projects. Today, many organisations are developing models for ‘Project Governance
Structures', which can be different to a traditional Organisation Structure in that it
defines accountabilities and responsibilities for strategic decision-making across the
project ( Crawford, Cooke-Davies, Hobbs, Labuschagne, Remington and Chen 2008 ). This
can be particularly useful to project management processes such as change control and
strategic decision-making.
The decision making framework of the project governance is supported by three pillars
( Klakegg, Williams, Magnussen and Glasspool 2008 ) namely: structure, people and
information.
1. Structure: This refers to the governance committee structure. As well as there being a
Project Board or Project Steering Committee, the broader governance environment may
include various stakeholder groups and perhaps user groups. The decision rights of all
these committees and how they relate must be laid down in policy and procedural
documentation. In this way, the project’s governance can be integrated within the wider
governance arena.
2. People: The effectiveness of the committee structure is dependent upon the people
that populate the various governance committees. Committee membership is determined
by the nature of the project whereas other factors come into play when determining
membership of programme and portfolio board which in turn determines which
organisational roles should be represented on the committee.
3. Information: This concerns the information that informs decision makers and consists of
regular reports on the project, issues and risks that have been escalated by the Project
Manager and certain key documents that describe the project, foremost of which is the
business case.
Project governance frameworks should be based around a number of core principles in

order to ensure their effectiveness. Garland (2009) says, there are four important
principles that derive the project governance structure:
1. Principle 1- Ensure a single point of accountability for the success of the project : The
most fundamental project accountability is accountability for the success of the project.
A project without a clear understanding of who assumes accountability for its success has
no clear leadership. With no clear accountability for project success, there is no one
person driving the solution of the difficult issues that beset all projects at some point in
their life.
2. Principle 2 - Service delivery ownership determines project ownership: Organisations

deliver services and utilise assets as platforms for the delivery of these services. It is
therefore critical that the assets delivered by the project meet the service delivery needs
of the organisation. If the project outputs do not support service delivery needs, as
detailed in the business case, to be met in full, the project has to some degree failed – it
has not achieved optimum value for money.
3. Principle 3 - Ensure separation of stakeholder management and project decision making
activities: The decision making effectiveness of a committee can be thought of as being
inversely proportional to its size. Not only can large committees fail to make timely
decisions, those it does make are often ill considered because of the particular group
dynamics at play. There is always the concern that this solution will lead to a further
problem if disgruntled stakeholders do not consider their needs are being met. Whatever
stakeholder management mechanism that is put in place must adequately address the
needs of all project stakeholders.
4. Principle 4 - Ensure separation of project governance and organisational governance

structures: Project governance structures are established precisely because it is
recognised that organisation structures do not provide the necessary framework to deliver
a project. Projects require flexibility and speed of decision making and the hierarchical
mechanisms associated with organisation charts do not enable this. Project governance
structures overcome this by drawing the key decision makers out of the organisation
structure and placing them in a forum thereby avoiding the serial decision making process
associated with hierarchies.
Miller & Hobbs (2005) and Pryke(2005) says that t he role of the project governance is
now-a-days very crucial in the overall success of the project in a project environment.
The major role of project governance in any type of project is as following:
1. Establish t he basis for project governance, approval and measurement —including

defining roles and accountabilities, policies and standards and associated processes.
2. Evaluate p roject proposals to select those that are the best investment of funds and
scarce resources and are within the firm’s capability and capacity to deliver.
3. Enable through resourcing of projects with staff and consultants, harnessing and
managing of business support and the provision of the governance resources.
4. Define the desired business outcomes, benefits and value — the business measures of
success and overall value proposition.
5. Control the scope, contingency funds, overall project value and so on.
6. Monitor the project’s progress, stakeholder’s commitment, results achieved and the
leading indicators of failure.
7. Measure the outputs, outcomes, benefits and value — against both the plan and
measurable expectations.
8. Act to ‘steer’ the project into the organization, remove obstacles, manage the critical
success factors project or benefit-realization shortfalls.
9. Develop the organization’s project delivery capability — continually building and

enhancing its ability to deliver more complex and challenging projects in less time and for
less cost while generating the maximum value.
In the conclusion, it can be said from the above discussion that the role of project
governance is to provide a decision making framework that is logical, robust and
repeatable to govern an organisation’s capital investments ( Miller and Hobbs 2005; Pryke
2005 ). In this way, an organisation will have a structured approach to conducting both its
business as usual activities and its business change or project and at the same time aligns
stakeholders, improves corporate performance and reduces surprises at Board level and
for stakeholders.
References:
1. GARLAND, R., 2009. Project Governance – A practical guide to effective project

decision making. Philadelphia: Kogan Page, London.
2. SHARMA, D., STONE, M. and EKINCI, Y., 2009. IT governance and project management:
A qualitative study. Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management,
16(1), pp.29-50.
3. CRAWFORD, L., COOKE-DAVIES, T., HOBBS, B., LABUSCHAGNE, L., REMINGTON, K. and
CHEN, P., 2008. Governance and support in the sponsoring of projects and programs.
Project Management Journal, 39, pp.43-55.
4. KLAKEGG, O.J., WILLIAMS, T., MAGNUSSEN, O.M. and GLASSPOOL, H., 2008. Governance
Frameworks for public project development and estimation. Project Management
Development, 39, pp.27-42.
5. MILLER, R., and HOBBS, B., 2005. Governance regimes for large complex projects.
Project Management Journal, 36(3), pp.42-50.
6. PRYKE, S.D., 2005. Towards a social network theory of project governance.

Construction Management and Economics, ISSN 0144-6193.

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Project governance is the management framework within which project decisions are

Project governance frameworks should be based around a number of core principles in

2. Principle 2 - Service delivery ownership determines project ownership: Organisations

4. Principle 4 - Ensure separation of project governance and organisational governance

1. Establish t he basis for project governance, approval and measurement —including

9. Develop the organization’s project delivery capability — continually building and

1. GARLAND, R., 2009. Project Governance – A practical guide to effective project

6. PRYKE, S.D., 2005. Towards a social network theory of project governance.

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