Checklist for project governance
Define clear and realistic project goals
| Done? | Task |
|---|---|
| ✓ | Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). |
| ✓ | Map your goals to actions and measures that help you track and evaluate them. |
| ✓ | Translate your goals into project deliverables that define the scope and quality of your solution. |
| ✓ | Monitor your goals regularly throughout the project lifecycle and adjust them as needed. |
| ✓ | Align your goals with the expectations and needs of relevant stakeholders across the organization. |
| ✓ | Communicate your goals clearly and consistently to the implementation team. |
Set up an efficient and effective project organization
| Done? | Task |
|---|---|
| ✓ | Organize your project into business streams that correspond to functional workstreams, such as finance, sales, or operations. |
| ✓ | Involve the business stream owners directly in the project to ensure their input and feedback. |
| ✓ | Secure strong executive sponsorship and active engagement from senior business stakeholders within each business stream. |
| ✓ | Encourage cross-team collaboration by involving members of each workstream in other workstreams to avoid working in silos. |
| ✓ | Plan and budget the project resources according to the effort and complexity of the project. |
| ✓ | Define accountability and responsibility at the project leadership level. Give each stream owner autonomy and empowerment to make decisions. |
| ✓ | Identify relevant project roles and areas of ownership. Assign them to team members with the right expertise and experience. |
Choose the best project approach
| Done? | Task |
|---|---|
| ✓ | Analyze, review, and confirm that your chosen implementation methodology works well with the business and project constraints and circumstances. |
Implement classic governance structures
| Done? | Task |
|---|---|
| ✓ | Establish an effective steering group that understands enough of the project details to actively steer it based on meaningful, actionable, and evidence-based information. |
| ✓ | Create a risk register with meaningful and actionable risks that align with project priorities. |
| ✓ | Update the risk register regularly and address the risks proactively. |
| ✓ | Implement stage gate or milestone-driven planning and reviews as checkpoints to better track and communicate implications of the project status. |
| ✓ | Define clear criteria for each stage gate or milestone that indicate whether the project is ready to move to the next phase. |
| ✓ | Conduct regular reviews at each stage gate or milestone to assess the status, quality, and risks of the project deliverables. |
| ✓ | Implement a design review board to ensure new designs and changes operate within the boundaries of the solution blueprint and don't adversely affect other designs. |
| ✓ | Define clear roles, responsibilities, processes, and standards for the design review board. |
| ✓ | Conduct regular design reviews to validate, approve, or reject design proposals. |
Next steps
- Learn more about how to define clear and measurable project goals that align with your business objectives
- Learn more about how to set up an efficient and effective project organization
- Learn more about how to choose the best project approach for your project
- Learn more about how to evaluate and improve classic governance structures etc. in key project areas
- Learn more about how to create a well-structured project plan that helps you track progress
- Review the main points from this section in our conclusion
- Read a real-world example of how a customer implemented Dynamics 365 with effective project governance in our case study