Who Will Your Project Manager Vote For in 2020?

The quiet professionals at Liberty Technology Advisors are conspicuously silent on our political beliefs, affiliations, or opinions. There is enough partisan infighting on the news without inviting it into your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project. However, I must say that it is exceedingly difficult to stay in the middle with such a polarized political climate. So…. who will your ERP project manager vote for? I will tell you but, I must warn you: the answer will positively shock you! Click Here and Find Out Why! Oops, sorry, this is not a clickbait pitch, it is a blog post. So, the candidate your Project Manager (PM) will vote for is… (drum roll please) … project governance.

Why? Allow me to enlighten you.

Project governance addresses key actions, statements, and processes that support the objectives of project sponsors, decision-makers and stakeholders. Great governance documents don’t just spring from a specific party or are revealed from a burning bush – they are the result of careful thought, deep consideration, and well-reasoned logic. Your project team, led by the PM, should invest a great deal of time into developing them. It will thrill the project team, especially the PM if you ask some questions about them.

The vital running mate of Project Governance is a chap we call the Project Charter. The Project Charter takes into account information developed during the executive-level strategy sessions and contains:

• A validated project vision
• A validated list of objectives that support the vision
• A list of the expected business benefits that the project will deliver
• A clear depiction of what constitutes success (a theory of victory)
• A high-level scoping statement, timeline, and budget
• A high-level list of project variables
• A high-level list of assumptions and anticipated risks
• A responsibilities matrix
• The plan to ensure and maintain alignment between executives, stakeholders, and the project team
• A list of standing project meeting schedules, agendas, and reports
• Change procedures that address how changes to budget, scope and time are resolved.

Like most running mates, the Project Charter should be taken very seriously. Simply put, the project charter’s job is to ensure that the project stays on track and completes within time, scope and budget.

It is up to you, but you could forego project governance and a project charter. However, I challenge you to ask any successful project manager about their frustrations when an organization does not follow through on creating project governance. As capable as many project managers are, they can only force the project train down the railroad line only so far. A PM can influence and cajole, but not enforce or direct. The key role of governance is to enable, facilitate, manage and direct (as necessary) the successful implementation of the project's changes into a prepared organization to maximize the benefits of the implementation. A secondary but critical role is to oversee, manage, and bound the project's operations. Sadly, project governance is an area more talked about than acted upon.

The fraternal twin to project governance is senior management support. Despite the many hours spent by senior executives in project governance roles, few have been trained for their project governance role and know what they're doing. It is more than just showing up to steering committee meetings. You need the senior leaders to steer the project locomotive down the tracks and facilitate the critical changes introduced by the project, minimizing the churn and burn. Consider this - very few organizations are built to be flexible to change. However, the whole thrust of an ERP implementation is to change the organization. You need horsepower from the senior management team to drive this change. Project governance is the rails that keep the project locomotive moving in the correct direction.

So, who does LTA endorse in 2020? We endorse a well-reasoned, balanced and strong project governance document. The senior management engagement is the perfect complement for governance and creates an unbeatable ticket unless you are not concerned with achievable timelines, reasonable scope, and thoughtful and realistic cost estimates.