“Project Governance: How Little Processes Can Have Big Impacts” on SmartSheet, February 5, 2018.
Alan Zucker, Founding Principal, Project Management Essentials, has over 25 years of experience managing project organizations in Fortune 100 companies. At one point, he managed an organization of over 150 project managers and project professionals. He has improved organizational and sponsor satisfaction while simultaneously reducing the costs of project management support. Over the course of his career, Zucker’s teams have delivered thousands of successful projects. He is also experienced in both managing traditional Waterfall projects as well as leading an Agile transformation. Zucker explains:
“Many companies that struggle with project governance make the classic management error of trying to micromanage their way out of the bad situation. They create heavy portfolio and project governance processes. They increase the amount of non-value-added paperwork, controls, and oversight. These efforts usually have the opposite of the intended effect: Rather than improving their organizations performance, it only gets worse.
Companies wanting to improve their project and portfolio performance should develop lightweight governance processes that empowers the project and portfolio managers. Empowerment does not mean chaos. Empowerment means that the organization has the minimally sufficient level of oversight and governance needed to be successful. Empowerment means that project managers are both held accountable for their performance and given the resources and decision-making authority to be successful.”