The governance failure that often precedes project failure

Governance is the set of structures, processes, and behaviors that determine how decisions are made, how information flows, and how accountability is assigned. Good governance does not guarantee project success. Poor governance makes project failure almost inevitable.

The governance failure that most commonly precedes project failure is not a dramatic failure. It is not a decision that was clearly wrong at the time it was made. It is a gradual erosion of the structures that were supposed to catch problems before they became crises.

The erosion typically begins with the steering committee. The steering committee was established to provide executive oversight of the project. It meets monthly. It receives a status report. It asks questions. It makes decisions.

The first sign of erosion is when the steering committee stops making decisions. The decisions that should be escalated to the steering committee — scope changes, budget increases, vendor disputes, schedule revisions — are being resolved at the project level. The steering committee is being informed, not consulted. It is receiving decisions, not making them.

The second sign is when the status reports stop containing bad news. Not because there is no bad news — there is always bad news on a complex project — but because the bad news is being managed before it reaches the steering committee. Issues are being resolved, or deferred, or reframed, before they appear in the report.

The third sign is cadence. Steering committees typically meet monthly. A project can deteriorate significantly in a month. By the time the steering committee meets, the problem that was emerging at the last meeting has become the crisis that is now being managed.

The governance failure is not the cause of the project failure. It is the condition that allowed the project failure to develop undetected. The project was failing — but the governance structures that should have detected the failure and triggered an intervention were not functioning as designed.