Lessons for Effective Project Governance by Steering Committees

Supervising Projects you don't understand-Do your major project receive the leadership they need.pdf Supervising Projects you don't understand-Do your major project receive the leadership they need.pdf - Alternative Formats Abstract

This study addresses the dilemmas and challenges facing senior executives who serve on steering committees or other supervising bodies of large and strategically important initiatives. They ultimately bear responsibility, but they are not in a position that allows them to understand all the details of what is going on. They do not have the time, they are distant from the actual work processes, and, after all, executives cannot be experts on everything. These initiatives are often cross-functional, involve breaking new ground, and bring together areas outside of executives normal expertise. Furthermore, since this these initiatives are temporary, normally in the form of a project, executives cannot rely on learning over time or draw upon established corporate practices. In this situation, how can executives provide the guidance and supervision these initiatives need? How can they avoid abdicating responsibility and becoming spectators to a project run by experts? The management profession has a solid understanding of what project managers and their teams should do. But we do not well understand the challenge for the steering committee that supervises the project managers. The added difficulty comes from organizational distance: hidden information, multiple areas of expertise, non-aligned interests, and other changing circumstances. Some projects fail not because of project management itself, but because of failure of the supervisors to provide the necessary senior leadership and governance to the project. Thus, project supervision has a very important effect on project success. But supervising a temporary, one-off strategic initiative that enters new territory is very different from managing an ongoing business. When the setting is temporary, and separate from your regular executive role, how deeply should you delve into the project? How do you set targets, evaluate progress, align the initiative with the organization, and evaluate the people? Based on interviews with 17 senior managers in three countries (Sweden, Germany and France), plus five investor-board members of start-ups in Shanghai, we make recommendations to senior managers on the composition of a good steering committee and how it should conduct itself. We find that the two dominant challenges of large projects are uncertainty as well as goal agreement among stakeholders. We discover strategies for shaping the steering committee, understanding the project, setting targets and measuring progress, getting the right information from the project, responding to surprises (which always happen in large projects), and for motivating and evaluating the people.

Recomendation Assignment:

During this assignment, consider that you are a project governance manager assigned to provide a recommendation.

By now, you have received seven weeks of materials (suggested readings, discussions/lectures, videos, two Zoom conference calls, and student journal presentations) regarding project governance. Your team received a book and article titled Harvard Business Review-Project Management Handbook by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez. I suggest reading the entire assigned case study carefully.

Supervising Projects you don't understand-Do your major project receive the leadership they need.pdf Supervising Projects you don't understand-Do your major project receive the leadership they need.pdf - Alternative Formats

Inside the assigned case study are over three difficulties and traps for steering committees. Your recomendation needs to identify no less than five difficulties and traps mentioned by the case study authors. Please select three areas essential to project management success. Explain why you selected the three areas. Please show detailed analysis (What, why, when, who, where, etc.) and consideration. Your recommendation must be clear, concise and constructive, submit three to five exceptional written pages, APA formatted, cover page, and citations and references must be used.

Suggested Citation:

Loch, Christoph H. and Mhring, Magnus and Sommer, Svenja C., Supervising Projects You Don't Understand - Do Your Major Projects Receive the Leadership They Need? (April 27, 2011). INSEAD Working Paper No. 2011/55/TOM, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1824342 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1824342