Posts Tagged ‘governance themes’
Quality Management
Quality management in a programme ensures that stakeholders are satisfied that their planned benefits have the best chance of being realised and will meet their expectations. If a programme does not apply quality effectively to its activities, its assets and outputs are less likely to be fit for purpose, with the consequential detrimental impact on the outcomes and desired benefits.
Quality management must be an activity that runs continuously throughout the life of a programme and beyond, the focus being on helping the programme with the achievement of the strategic goals.
Business Case
The programme’s Business Case provides the vital test of the viability of the programme. It should be used to answer the question “Is the investment in the programme still worth it?”
Since this viability question is ongoing, the Business Case is actively maintained throughout the programme and continually updated with new information.
The Business Case is an aggregation of specific information about the value of the benefits, the risks to achieving them, the costs of delivering the Blueprint and the timescales for achievement.
Risk Management and Issue Resolution
A risk is an uncertain event or set of events which, should it occur, will have an effect on the achievement of objectives. These effects need not all be detrimental as a risk can be either a threat or an opportunity.
The task of risk management is to ensure that the programme make a cost-effective use of a Risk Management Process that includes a series of well-defined steps. The aim is to support better decision-making through a good understanding of risks and their likely impact.
Issues, on the other hand, are events that have happened, were not planned, are currently affecting the programme in some way and need to be actively dealt with and resolved. Risks, should they occur, become issues.
The task of issue resolution is to prevent an issue from threatening the programme’s chances of achieving a successful outcome.
Planning and Control
Planning and control are key to the success of any transformation programme, but should be seen as distinctly separate concepts and activities. The preparation of a Programme Plan involves processing large amounts of information and extensive consultation to build the plan.
Programme control provides supporting activities and processes that run throughout the programme to refine and improve delivery, minimise the impact of ambiguity and bring certainty wherever possible.
The Programme Plan should include information on the Project Dossier (timescales, costs, outputs and dependencies), risks and assumptions, a schedule showing the tranches, the transition plan and the monitoring and control activities and performance targets. The Monitoring and Control Strategy will set out the approach for applying the programme’s internal controls based on the Programme Plan.
The governance theme Vision
A vision is a picture of a better future. It is the basis for the outcomes and delivered benefits of the programme, and as such it is a vital focus and enabler for the buy-in, motivation and activity-alignment of the large community of people involved in the programme.
The Vision Statement is used to communicate the end goal of the programme being an outward-facing description of the future state following programme delivery.
A good Vision Statement should be written in the future state, be easy to understand and to communicate, apply to a broad range of stakeholders, describe a desirable and compelling future that matches the degree of transformational change, be verifiable and should be short and memorable.
The governance theme Organisation
Establishing a clear and effective organisation is critical to programme success. Ensuring that the Programme Organisation meets the needs of the programme is both an initial and ongoing task.
Effective Programme Organisation requires a combination of defines roles, clear responsibilities and management structures together with reporting arrangements that are needed to deliver the programme’s desired outcomes.
Programme management is most effective when issues are debated freely and risks are evaluated openly. This requires a leadership style and culture that encourages the flow of information between the projects and the programme. Every opportunity to advance the programme towards its goals should be welcomed and converted into constructive progress.
The Governance Themes
Governance is the control framework through which programmes deliver their change objectives and remain within corporate visibility and control. The programme’s control framework needs to be integrated with the corporate governance framework of the organisation, using the organisation’s existing governance and control frameworks wherever they exist.
MSP describes nine Governance Themes, each of which details the consistent controls needed to manage the programme.
MSP is another best practise from the office of Government Commerce (OGC). They provide to the public their best practise on procurement, programme management and project management.
For project management OGC’s knowledge and experience is put together in the Prince2 project management standard. One of the basics of Prince2 is its Product Based approach. MSP has another goal to achieve: an approach based upon the realisation of benefits.
Managing Successful Programmes provides a principles based framework that is described in three parts:
- Programme management principles
- Governance Themes
- Transformational flow
Programme management principles
In this introduction I’ll just list the 7 principles of programme management of MSP:
- Remaining aligned with corporate strategy
- Leading change
- Envisioning and communicating a better future
- Focusing on the benefits and threats to them
- Adding value
- Designing and delivering a coherent capability
- Learning from experience
With these principles OGC provides a common framework of understanding (a FOU??) for all programmes. OGC states that the principles are universal to every programme, self-validating and empowering.
Governance themes
In order to realise the benefits of a programme there is a need to have a control framework for the programme. The control framework, or better said governance, is needed to give attention to the control of the transformation programme. Governance is also needed for control/stewardship of the organisation as a corporate entity.
Governance will help the programme to integrate in the control framework of the organisation. Ideally it will use this organisation framework if possible.
The Governance themes are:
- Organisation
- Vision
- Leadership and stakeholder engagement
- Benefits realisation management
- Blueprint design and delivery
- Planning and control
- The business case
- Risk management and issue resolution
- Quality management
Transformational flow
The transformational flow looks at how transformational business changes are achieved. The steps needed are iterative and interrelated. Although programmes can start with a programme mandate, some programmes emerge on another way:
- a proposed change can be more complex of bigger than originally thought. So another approach is necessary to give the business change a better chance of success.
- various projects are trying to achieve similar changes to the same part of the organisation. Combining those projects result in a more efficient way of reaching the require business change and solving duplication and conflicts between the projects.
For programmes, emerging this way, special attention has to be given to the achieved project results so far.
The following Transformational flow processes are identified within MSP:
- Identifying a programme
- Defining a programme
- Managing the tranches
- Delevering the capability
- Realising the benefits
- Closing a programme
In the next posts I’ll look further into the Programme management principles, the governance themes and the transformational flow.