This was intended to be a humorous account of awful project governance. I am a connoisseur of horror stories related to delivery and execution in the workplace. My favourite one is when the program manager brought the business analyst’s laptop to the hospital – where the business analyst was bedridden due to stress from the program – so that the business analyst can finish a deliverable!

This is one that seemed pertinent to share, given how organizations grow and introduce new layers of management. This is a theoretical example of how a big company might implement project governance in the worst way. 😈

Implementing the project governance methodology as detailed below is an easy way to cause worker dissatisfaction . Please don’t do this. This example is for fun.

I had a passionate coffee chat with somebody about project governance processes and stakeholder reviews. We were traded war stories on how many presentations is required to successfully deliver a project. I told that person, “It can be as bad as this…”

For Your First Round of Stakeholders

Imagine that you are working on a waterfall project. That waterfall project is going to take about 6 months to deliver. Assume each month will be the completion of a phase. In each of those months, you need to do a presentation that has the following to your stakeholders.

If you can imagine, any time we launch a new product or feature, we will have to make at least 6 executive presentations. One for each of plan, requirements, design, build/test, deploy, and review.

How About a Second and Third Round of Stakeholders

It is not that bad right now, but think about this:

Imagine that the previously mentioned project stakeholders were only Director level. Which means, right after Director approval, you will have to seek VP level approval.

And if that is not enough, throw in another Special VP forum 😱 that was formed to focus on a very specific purpose. Which means that you need to juggle another round of VP level approvals.

Director forum ↳ Regular VP forum ↳ Special VP forum

So let’s tally it up: 6 project phases x 3 governance boards per phase = 18 presentations

But…Whyyyyy?

All these presentation are made to the executives the with purpose of asking for permission. By the way, if you are unable to complete the sign-off sheet …

So, it is back to the drawing board for you. Worst case scenario, you might have to present to the Director level again, before proceeding to the VP level. It is like a terrible game of chutes and ladders.