Connecting Project Governance to Organizational Authority

Setting up a formal governance structure is often one of the first things an organization focuses on once a new initiative is approved to proceed. It provides the framework to support decision making, escalation, and accountability throughout the project lifecycle.

To help ensure decisions are being made in the right place, it is important to consider how the structure will connect to governance groups already established within the organization. Corporate, clinical, and information technology governance may already have authority over some of the decisions that will come up during the project lifecycle. Building an isolated project hierarchy can create confusion about where decisions belong and increase the likelihood that something will need to be reconsidered through the appropriate organizational governance process later.

Identify the governance relationships

There is no single structure that will work for every project. A large transformational initiative may need involvement from senior organizational leadership, while a smaller one may have the support and authority it needs at the director level. The level of oversight needed will depend on the scope, complexity, level of risk, and how broadly the work reaches across the organization.

When defining the project structure, one or more individuals may also hold an operational leadership role or sit on another governance committee. That overlap can be helpful because they bring knowledge and perspective from other parts of the organization, but it does not automatically create a formal connection between the two governance structures or replace established processes for review and approval.

For example, a steering committee member who also sits on a clinical governance committee may be able to provide valuable direction to the project. Their agreement with the steering committee, however, does not replace a decision that belongs with the clinical governance committee. In each setting they are considering the work through a different lens and as part of a different decision-making structure. The important distinction is not simply whether the right person has been involved, but whether the decision has been make through the group that holds the authority to make it.

Establish decision and escalation pathways

Once those boundaries are understood, the project needs a way to move decisions and issues between them. Rather than determining where something should go each time it occurs, the governance structure should establish pathways that the team can use throughout the project. This includes understanding:

➡️ What can be decided within the project

➡️ When another level of authority needs to become involved

➡️ Where the different types of decisions or issues should go

➡️ Who is responsible for moving them through the appropriate pathway

Having a member of an operational governance group on the project does not automatically mean that group has been engaged. There may already be a process for bringing something forward for review, involving the appropriate stakeholders, documenting the decision, or obtaining approval. The project governance structure should connect to those processes rather than bypass them.

The pathways do not need to anticipate a route for every possible situation, but they should provide enough structure to support most of what the project is likely to encounter. They also need enough flexibility that when something does not fit neatly into an established route, the team still knows who to engage to determine where it belongs.

Maintaining the flow of information

When clear relationships between project and organizational governance are established, they can support more than escalation. They also provide a way for relevant information to continue moving between the project and the organization throughout the project lifecycle.

When the project sends a decision or issue to another governance group, the outcome needs to make its way back to the team so the work can continue. Information originating elsewhere in the organization may also need to find its way into the project. For example, another project may have timelines that shift and affect subject matter expert availability, or a quality improvement team may identify an area that requires additional attention. If those changes have implications for something the project is planning, designing, or implementing, the team needs to know about them.

These connections help keep the project aware of decisions and changes taking place outside its own governance structure. They also help ensure that the organizational groups with authority over the work remain connected to decisions and issues arising within the project.