Who's Governing Your Governance Committee?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Governance   Risk Management  

When I was growing up in England, I had compulsory Latin lessons for one grade. It was a very long school year and not something that think back to very often. However, one of the phrases that I do remember is “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”, which still finds occasional use in English and generally translates as “Who watches the watchmen?” It’s a phrase that can be applied to a number of different situations, but in this article I want to use it to consider project governance. If governance is designed to ensure that project execution occurs appropriately, then who ensures that governance occurs appropriately?

Understanding governance
Before we go too far, we need to define exactly what we mean by governance--it’s one of those functions that tends to have very different meanings in different organizations. At the risk of generalizing, I tend to see two distinct forms of governance: the reactive audit- and control-driven approach, and the more proactive steering or governance committee approach. Many organizations will choose one approach over another, though in truth there is a part for both to work within an organization. Reactive governance works well when it comes to monitoring and controlling the execution of process, the completion of standard documents, the provision of signoffs, etc.; while a proactive function is better …

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