Mention programme governance and many people immediately think of long board meetings, extensive paperwork and slow approval processes. Sometimes that reputation is deserved, usually because governance has become an end in itself rather than a way of helping a programme make decisions.
Good governance should do the opposite. It should make clear who can decide what, get difficult decisions to the right people quickly, and give the organisation confidence that the programme is still delivering what it set out to achieve.
For me, that’s the test of whether a governance model is working. It should enable delivery, not get in its way.
Governance exists to support decisions
One of the simplest ways to think about governance is to start with a question:
What decisions need to be made, and who is best placed to make them?
A useful starting point is to make explicit who owns delivery, strategic direction and benefits, who can make investment decisions, and which risks genuinely need escalating. When those responsibilities are unclear, decisions either stall or travel unnecessarily far up the organisation.
This is where governance structures can become more complicated than they need to be. Boards aren’t there to review every operational decision, and programme managers shouldn’t need to seek permission for choices that properly sit within their remit.
The structure should provide enough oversight for the organisation to remain confident in the programme while leaving people with the authority to do the jobs they have been given.
Keep decisions at the right level
Not every decision requires a programme board, and not every issue requires executive involvement.
I generally want a programme board dealing with decisions the delivery team cannot sensibly make for itself: changes to strategic direction, significant investment choices, major risks, competing organisational priorities and issues requiring senior authority to resolve. It shouldn’t be deciding routine delivery questions.
Decision-making should sit at the lowest level that has the authority, information and accountability to make the decision properly.
When that doesn’t happen, relatively small issues begin travelling upwards. Senior leaders become occupied with decisions that don’t need them, while delivery teams gradually lose confidence in making decisions themselves. The result is more governance but slower delivery.
Clear tolerances can help. If teams understand the boundaries within which they can make decisions, they only need to escalate when something moves outside them.
Use boards for decisions, not updates
Many programme boards spend most of their time receiving progress reports on milestones, budgets, procurement and risks. Those things matter, but they can usually be understood before the meeting.
Using scarce senior time to read information aloud isn’t governance.
The meeting should concentrate on questions that require judgement. Are the expected benefits still realistic? Have organisational priorities changed? Are we still solving the right problems? What is getting in the way? What decision does the programme need from the people in the room?
That changes how I think about board reporting as well. Papers and dashboards should provide enough information for people to understand the position before the meeting, leaving the meeting itself for discussion and decisions.
A useful test for an agenda item is whether the conversation can influence what happens next. If it can’t, there needs to be a good reason for using board time on it.
Governance should change with the programme
Governance shouldn’t remain fixed while the programme itself changes.
During Discovery, the important questions are likely to concern strategic fit, evidence, investment, architecture and procurement. As the programme moves into delivery, attention shifts towards progress, dependencies, risks and organisational adoption. Towards the end, governance should increasingly focus on benefits, operational readiness and the transfer of accountability into BAU.
The people involved may need to change as well. Someone who is essential to an early investment or architecture decision may not need to attend every board throughout delivery. Equally, the people who will eventually own the services, systems and benefits in BAU need to become more involved as the programme approaches transition.
Keeping exactly the same board, agenda and reporting structure throughout a programme is usually a sign that the governance is following a template rather than the needs of the work.
Keep outcomes and benefits visible
A business case shouldn’t disappear into a drawer once a programme has been approved. Governance should keep returning to the outcomes that justified the investment in the first place.
That means looking beyond whether milestones have been completed. A programme can deliver its projects successfully and still fail to produce the expected improvement.
Depending on the programme, I want governance to maintain visibility of things such as:
- resident or customer experience
- service performance
- productivity and capacity
- employee experience
- financial benefits
- risk and quality
The measures will vary, but the principle is the same. Governance needs to retain a line of sight between what the programme is delivering and why the organisation is investing in it.
This also provides a better basis for challenge. A board that simply approves recommendations isn’t adding much value. Useful questions are often straightforward: What evidence supports this? What are we assuming? What alternatives have been considered? What happens if we do nothing? Are the expected benefits still credible?
The point isn’t to manufacture challenge for its own sake. It’s to expose assumptions before they become expensive commitments.
Use governance to protect priorities
New opportunities appear throughout any transformation programme. Services make new requests, technology changes, new problems emerge and occasionally additional funding becomes available.
Without some discipline, all of those things find their way onto the roadmap.
Governance provides a mechanism for protecting the programme from that gradual expansion. The question isn’t simply whether a new idea is worthwhile. It is also what happens to the existing programme if we accept it.
If a new initiative requires delivery capacity, that capacity has to come from somewhere. Decision-makers should therefore understand what will be delayed, reduced or stopped as a consequence.
This is where governance and prioritisation need to work together. New opportunities can be assessed against a reasonably consistent set of criteria, with the evidence becoming stronger as they move through Discovery or Proof of Concept.
The board can then make an explicit investment decision rather than allowing scope to expand incrementally.
Keep reporting simple
Board reporting should be designed around the conversation you need the board to have.
I usually want a concise view of progress against outcomes, benefits, significant risks, material changes and, most importantly, decisions required. Supporting detail can sit underneath that and be available when somebody needs it.
Putting all of that detail into the main board pack doesn’t make governance more rigorous. It often makes the important information harder to find.
The same principle applies to programme information more generally. I prefer a small set of information that is maintained as part of delivery and used by the programme team, workstreams and board, rather than creating a separate version of reality for governance each month.
That reduces reporting effort, but more importantly it means people are making decisions from the same underlying picture.
Make decisions visible
Good governance also needs a memory.
Programmes make hundreds of decisions over their lifetime, often based on assumptions and circumstances that make perfect sense at the time. Six months later, it can be surprisingly difficult to remember why a particular route was chosen.
Not every discussion needs documenting in detail, but significant decisions should be easy to trace. What was decided? Why? What evidence or assumptions supported it? Who was accountable for the decision?
This becomes particularly important when people change, when an earlier assumption needs to be revisited, or when the programme begins moving into BAU.
It also makes it easier to learn. If benefits don’t materialise or an implementation proves more difficult than expected, the organisation can look back at the assumptions behind the original decision rather than simply concluding that the project went wrong.
Governance should make delivery easier
I don’t judge programme governance by the number of boards, reports or approval gates it creates. I judge it by whether the right people have enough information and authority to make good decisions at the point those decisions are needed.
That means being clear about what belongs with the board and what belongs with the team, using board time for decisions rather than updates, keeping benefits and priorities visible, and changing the governance as the programme moves from Discovery through delivery and into BAU.
If governance consistently delays decisions, generates reporting that nobody uses or pushes routine choices upwards, adding more governance is unlikely to fix it. The structure needs to be reconsidered.
Good governance gives a programme enough control to maintain confidence without taking responsibility away from the people delivering it.