Governance of Project Management

Abstract

It appears that project governance is an ambiguous concept that suffer under a lack of an agreed on, generally accepted definition. This leads to the organisations developing their own understanding or interpretation of the concept, project governance, which fit their individually perspectives [6]. To investigate a common definition or use of project governance, the concept can be looked at from a bottom view or a top-down perspective. This article will focus on investigating the top-down perspective and look at governance starting at the corporate level and being implemented in project management through ‘’governance of project management’’. At the corporate level in an organisation, governance begins with the “Board of Directors” defining the objectives of the company and the role of projects in attaining these objectives [4]. Corporate governance also involves the relationships between the organisation’s board, management, shareholders, and other stakeholders [5,6]. The link between the corporate governance and the activities of project management within an organisation is called the governance of project management. It ensures that the project portfolio of an organisation is aligned to its objectives and is sustainable and delivered efficiently [5]. Different frameworks, principles and models has been established to guide project governance in an organisation. The three addressed in this article are; the thirteen principles of project governance which will help an organisation to avoid project failures developed by Association for Project Management (APM) [5], a guide to project governance framework implementation provided by Project Management Institute (PMI) [7], and the Project Governance Model for non-profit organisations proposed by Patrick S. Renz [3].

Annotated bibliography

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