We strongly make the point that programme governance should not simply be confined to the identified programme team, dealing with the day-to-day implementation. There should be other layers of governance, as illustrated in Figure 1.
The programme director should be answerable in the first instance to a steering board which provides a higher level inspection of costs, benefits and delivery milestones and becomes an issues and risks resolution forum if matters present themselves that are beyond the resolution of the programme director.
Chaired by the senior programme sponsor, the steering board should comprise a broad range of talent: senior HR people, internal audit, line managers and finance. At a higher level still, it would be beneficial to have an overarching business programme steering board that looks to see how the HR transformation programme dovetails with other change programmes that may be going on in the business at that time. It also provides a further opportunity to inspect cost benefits and delivery milestones.
The emphasis around periodic inspection of cost benefits and delivery mile-stones cannot be overstated. Whilst some may view this as an unnecessary administrative burden that simply detracts from 'getting on with the job', it is undeniably the case that without these disciplines in place the risks to the programme outcomes can become massively magnified.
Frequent inspection of costs, benefits and delivery milestones can provide comfort and assurance that the programme is basically on track. Furthermore, it can pick out those things that, if unchecked, are likely to destabilise the programme at a later point in time.
Early identification and remediation of these kinds of issues provide enormous dividends. Left unchecked, however, such issues could cause significant ramifications, if not a crisis, for the programme in its later stages.
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