#185 | Why Governance Fails (And What It’s Really Meant to Do) with Ross Garland

What if governance isn’t slowing your projects down—but the very thing protecting them from failure?

In this powerful episode, Fatimah is joined by Ross Garland, President of P3GQA and global expert in Project, Programme and Portfolio Governance (P3 governance), to unpack why so many delivery challenges have less to do with project management—and more to do with how organisations design governance.

With over 25 years of experience across billions of dollars in global investments, Ross brings a grounded, no-nonsense perspective on what actually breaks when governance is treated as administration instead of investment protection. From unclear accountability to over-engineered committees, he shares why even strong teams can struggle when decision paths and ownership aren’t clearly defined.

Together, they explore one of the most common—and costly—mistakes organisations make: treating complex initiatives as projects instead of programs. Ross explains how that single misstep impacts everything from board structure to benefits realisation, and why governance must be designed to support outcomes, not just activity.

The conversation also dives into what “lean governance” really looks like, how to create accountability that empowers rather than blames, and why the business case should remain a living decision tool throughout delivery—not just something created upfront and forgotten.

Finally, they tackle governance in agile environments—how to maintain oversight of investment decisions while adapting to faster, iterative delivery cycles without slowing teams down.

If you’ve ever questioned whether your governance is helping or hindering delivery, this episode offers a clear, practical lens on how to get it right.

To learn more about Ross’s work, explore P3 governance resources, or take the governance assessment:
 👉 https://p3gqa.com

Connect with Ross on LinkedIn:
 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossgarland

🎧 Tune in, take notes, and rethink the role governance plays in driving real outcomes across your organisation.

In this episode, I cover: 

5:10 Ross’s Path into P3 Governance

9:11 Projects Programs Portfolios Made Clear

16:11 When Governance Becomes Too Many Committees

18:09 Signs Work Should Become a Project

44:25 AI Governance Hype and Getting Basics Right

And more...

Transcript

Welcome And A Note On Help

Fatimah Abbouchi 0:00

You're listening to Agile Ideas the podcast, hosted by Fatimah Abbouchi. For anyone listening out there not having a good day, please know there is help out there. Hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of Agile Ideas. I'm Fatimah, CEO at AMO, mental health ambassador, and your host. In today's episode, I'm speaking to Ross Garland. Ross is the president of P3GQA. He's a global expert in P3 governance who's written white papers for the UK Cabinet Office. He's the lead author of the TSO Guide, Project Programme and Portfolio Governance, also known as P3G. It is a principles-based guide that allows professionals to design, implement, and operate effective and efficient governance arrangements for an organization's portfolio of projects and programs. He's been working globally as an expert consultant in the field of P3 governance for over 25 years. He has designed, implemented, or reviewed the governance of billions of dollars of investments in numerous sectors, including mining, healthcare, aviation, public transport, roads, education, infrastructure, utilities, and ICT. His work assists senior executives to gain the visibility, control, and confidence they require to ensure their investments deliver value for money. So please join me in welcoming Ross to the show. Ross, welcome to the show.

Ross Garland 1:32

Thank you very much, Fatimah. I'm very happy to be here.

Fatimah Abbouchi 1:35

It's a pleasure to have you. I um have been watching your journey from afar and have appreciated some of the things you're doing. And I, as I was just mentioning earlier, talking about governance is something that I am really passionate about and love to talk about. Some people don't like to talk about it, but it's so necessary. And I'm really glad there's someone else that actually cares about it as much as I think I do. So that's really good to have you here today.

Ross Garland 2:02

We're two nerds together, Fatimah.

Fatimah Abbouchi 2:04

Exactly. That sounds that sounds good to me. So in that journey, you've been doing this a lot longer than I. And I'm curious first, I think for those listening, to learn a little bit about your background in your own words. You've been doing this for a long time, and there's a lot to talk about. But first, just sort of take us back. How did you get into this industry in this space? How did you learn about governance and projects? What first drew you to governance in general and how how did you keep focused on it for so long?

Ross Garland 2:33

Okay, so I um uh I've always been involved in projects, and uh my background is Australian actually. So I, as you probably tell by the accent.

Fatimah Abbouchi 2:43

Okay. You're slightly losing it, slightly losing it.

Ross Garland 2:47

Yeah, so I'm Australian, spent uh uh long time in Australia until I was in my late 20s, then I moved to England, spent a long time here, then I moved back to Australia, spent another long time in Australia, and now I'm back in England uh for good now. I hope I've stopped changing countries. So I've been back over here for about six or seven years now, and um so I've always been in the project space, and then um virtually most of my career I've been a consultant, and I was working with a client um who uh had a problem in their organization around um uh project delivery, and asked me if I could have a look to see what was going on. So they always thought, and this is typical, they thought it's something to do with project management. We've got an issue with our project management. And the more I looked at it, the more I could see the project manager's doing fine, but the governance framework that they were operating in was really weak. And so I thought from that point that uh I needed to understand governance better. So then I looked up the documentation on it, and it's very, very limited. Practical governance, I mean. Yeah, you can get the theory behind it, yeah, but when when the boss calls you into the office and says, can you fix this problem on this program? There's very little out there. So I started with the little there was and uh started working forward from there, but also worked backwards to understand the logic behind what they were doing. And from that, I started to develop more and more uh governance-related principles and so forth. And so for the last 20 years almost, I've been almost um not exclusively but heavily in the governance space, working in the governance space, and that's been in Australia and here in the UK. Um, and now um my partner and I uh set up P3G QA, which is the qualification authority for um P3 governance. And uh so now I do training. I've never been a trainer before, but I'm loving it. I quite enjoy it. But I only ever train in governance. Um

Ross’s Path Into P3 Governance

Ross Garland 5:10

that's my specialty, that's the area, that's my sweet spot. So uh yeah, so that's basically my background.

Fatimah Abbouchi 5:18

Okay, so a lot to unpack there. I am intrigued because a lot of the time when people go into organizations, even consultants, some of us, we'll end up focusing purely on the problem at hand and focus forward. But I like the fact that you've tried to unpack what they had there, which I think is a positive thing. A lot of people don't spend the time to do that. Speaking of your career over the last 20 or so years, without mentioning any names, what would you say has been the most um complex or expensive governance failure that you've ever witnessed? And and what signals do you think that the client or the sponsor or the board missed?

Ross Garland 5:55

Uh there was one in particular that resulted in um uh a couple of CEOs losing their jobs and so forth. And it was um uh I won't go into any detail, but it was a hard infrastructure project. And the issue they had was um, well, there were a couple of issues. One of the fundamentals is everyone there's a tendency to still talk about projects, and then when organizations are delivering something that's worth billions, they start talking about complex projects because they don't understand what a program is. And you need to understand what a program is because you cannot deal with a project and govern a project the same way that you would govern a program. Because if you do, if you try and do that, what happens is you end up with multiple work streams with only one governance board at the very top, and so many decisions flowing up to that board, um, little in the way of coordination because you haven't got a program manager involved. And the big issue that um people, that organizations that treat um uh comp that treat programs as complex projects, the big issue they face is that what you get from a program is you'll have the program board and you have various project boards underneath. What they forget is those project boards have business people on them. And those business people are intercepting these questions, these issues as they come up to the program board. And the program structure drives business deeper into the program. And so you're getting a more business-centric outcome uh by treating it as a program than you do as treating it as a project. And that was one of the fundamentals with this um big failure. They didn't have uh a program approach to it. And um there were certain other things. So, for instance, um uh the whole concept of what constitutes success, um if you treat it as a project, that can end up being a very engineering-centric view of what constitutes success, whereas a program takes a business view. And this was all about um having an engineering view, and the uh the assets were delivered, but uh there was uh there was a major issue with uh implementation because they hadn't put in place everything they absolutely needed to in order to get a business outcome. They had an asset outcome. So yeah, it's um and it was a big failure, very political. Uh CEO lost their job, general manager lost their job, um, terrible outcome because you know the these were good people that were losing their job, and it wasn't necessarily their fault.

Fatimah Abbouchi 8:56

It's so common uh seeing that sort of trend, and particularly when they put a business um sort of someone with a strong business background, but maybe no project program portfolio background into that role as well, which also can be a reason why a lot of these things fail.

Projects Programs Portfolios Made Clear

Fatimah Abbouchi 9:11

Why do you think that people don't understand the difference between projects and programs and portfolio? And maybe just in layman terms, help someone listening who doesn't know what those, the difference between those are.

Ross Garland 9:24

Okay. Um yeah, just just picking up on you on your first comment, though, it was an interesting one. When you put a business person in charge and they don't have the project skill sets, um, and organizations face this um fairly consistently, and some of them what they'll do is they say, well, this is a very technical uh project, therefore we need a technical person in place. So they put the delivery in charge, the delivery people in charge of the project. So they make them accountable for the success of the project. The trouble with that is if you're a delivery person, your focus and probably your contract, your performance measures are based upon schedule and budget. They're not based upon business outcomes, they're not based upon benefits, delivering benefits. So if you put a delivery person in place to be accountable for the success of a project or a program, you're going to end up with a focus on asset delivery. Now, I would always argue that even if the business person, if you've got the right business person and you make them accountable for the success of the project, if they don't have the skill sets, you can support them with that. What they do have is the business knowledge.

Fatimah Abbouchi 10:40

Yes.

Ross Garland 10:41

You can always support the project management skill sets and the technology skill sets. You can always support them with that. What you can't support is a delivery person with the business knowledge. It doesn't work the other way around. Um and now I've forgotten the second half of your question.

Fatimah Abbouchi 11:00

You know, using that example, um, the fact that I mean I find a lot of the times, and you've probably seen, maybe see this first hand with all the training that you do, but often people don't even understand what governance is, let alone project, program, or portfolio.

Ross Garland 11:14

Uh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Okay, so yes, it's that whole question about why aren't organizations embracing the concept of program management. It's really interesting, actually, because we talk about projects, programs, and portfolios. And in terms of awareness, projects came first, then came programs, then came portfolios. Everyone's using projects. A lot of people are now starting to use uh portfolios more and more, but they still don't understand programs. So, what a program is, it just says if you're looking at what you think is a complex project with many related parts, it's sometimes better to manage those parts as projects in their own right, and then have those projects deliver in a coordinated fashion. And when they deliver it in a coordinated fashion and are reporting up to an overarching board, that's a program. And the point I make is that if you don't have a board and you just have a project manager over a work stream and then sub-project managers or whatever, you're losing business input in the detail of the program. So that's the issue that organizations are facing. I'm I I don't know why programs haven't made a bigger impact. I'm not entirely sure of that. I think it's just a lack of understanding and a lack, I think too, that what happens with organizations is somebody will describe you need a program here. And they look at the bureaucracy associated with it, you know, more project boards, and they think this is just overly bureaucratic because whoever is explaining it to them can't um detail why a program is going to be the best way of delivering this particular outcome. And so consequently, they see it as being overly bureaucratic. So I think that's a big problem.

Fatimah Abbouchi 13:20

Yeah, yeah, it is definitely a big problem. I I think um also on the operational lens, just more broadly, I think you're right. The terminology associated with program, I've seen companies and clients use the term program for things that have absolutely no reference to projects whatsoever. And so I think there's a general lack of understanding in the operational side of businesses. So is P3G and the training that you're doing, do you find that it's being uptaken by those maybe practitioners like us that you know want to uplift and improve what we know about governance? Or do you find there's a lot of operational people that maybe aren't involved in projects that are getting the value of learning these things as well? Because they're both needing.

Ross Garland 14:00

Yeah, it's it's mainly people in the project space. So for instance, um uh we get a lot of uh PMO leaders, lots of PMO people involved to try and understand how the governance should work in their organization. Because I think it's becoming more and more apparent that governance is not something that works well in organizations, and you only have to see it. You go into an organization, and every project tends to be governed differently. And you know, there's a lack of consistency, which is you know why we one of the reasons we developed the guide so that you could get consistency in the approach. And um, also um the principles in that guide, you referred to this earlier. The principles in the guide are all based on logic. You can understand the logic behind the principle, you don't have to accept it on face value. So um yeah, organizations are getting better at governance, to be honest. I keep seeing the same problems over and over again. In Australia, I I had um um one client, a government client, who were very good, you know, they were great people. Um, but what used to happen was I'd get a phone call to say, Ross, the governance on such and such a project is really problematic. Can you come in and sort it out? So I'd come in and sort it out, and you know, I'd I'd um I'd document it all, but the same problem on a different project would pop up six months later, and they'd call me in again. So it was a great business model from my perspective, yeah, but not a terribly good business model from the organization's perspective.

Fatimah Abbouchi 15:44

So, in that example, and I've seen um as a consultant like lots of instances of what you just described, especially when it's in the same organizations, like in Australia, you might you might have spent some time potentially in the banks, the banks have that problem as well, where they create PMO structures to manage their governance from different divisions and departments, and they're all doing the same thing in different ways. And it makes me wonder why they don't just streamline the way that they do it because it's the same company's same ultimate goal.

When Governance Becomes Too Many Committees

Fatimah Abbouchi 16:11

But how do you know um when a when governance is overbuilt for the problem that the department's company team is trying to solve? Is there some telltale signs to help you sort of think, look, you've actually over-engineered this and gone too far?

Ross Garland 16:26

Uh you occasionally get the an organization that um thinks everything is a project. Yes, and so you've you've got to try and pull them back from that position. And there's there's signposts, the the guide actually um gives them signposts for when something should be treated as a as a project. Um but uh the bigger issue is not so much engineering, but every time there's an issue with their governance, they form another committee.

Fatimah Abbouchi 16:58

Oh yes.

Ross Garland 16:59

And so yeah, it's a band-aid approach to governance. Yes, and um it often happens on big projects like I haven't I haven't been um officially engaged in any of the giga projects in the Middle East, but I've done a lot of training in the Middle East, so we're constantly talking about these giga projects, and one of the issues they have is that when you get a project that big, you know, like you're talking projects in the tens of billions of dollars, you've got um many, many committees getting involved in decision making, and it's a complete morass of committees. And it's not hard to actually sort that out and get a very clean decision-making line, but um the organization struggled to achieve that. So that's what I find more than simply um putting too much governance in place. I find that the governance they put in place is not really fit for purpose. And it's a bit of a mess, really. That's more of what I see.

Signs Work Should Become A Project

Fatimah Abbouchi 18:09

You you mentioned the three signposts that you use as a reference to determine if something's a project, how helping our um listeners understand that. What would be those signposts?

Ross Garland 18:19

I knew you'd asked me that, and I thought to myself, can I remember? Can I remember? There's a number of things.

Fatimah Abbouchi 18:24

One of them, one of them is fine.

Ross Garland 18:26

I know. I do there's a couple of things. So, for instance, um, if you're working in a team, uh, you know, an operational team, and you're working on something, but there's something else is coming, so you're doing a bit of work on that as well. Yeah. If you find, after three months of this, that your ability to do your day-to-day job is starting to suffer because you're having to work on this other thing as well, that's one signpost. Because turning it into a project won't solve the workload, but what it does is structure it. It says the project needs this percentage of your workload and you might need backfilling and so forth. So that's one workload. If you're sitting there in a team and you're looking to the future and you're thinking this is just going to get bigger and bigger, we're going to need more resources. As soon as you start thinking about more resources, you have to justify those resources. How do you justify resources? Business case. What are the benefits we're going to receive? What's the cost and risk of doing this? So that's another signpost if you can see future resources being required. If you find that your little team that's working on this is starting to have to have lots and lots of conversations with other teams, that suggests this might be a project because it's starting to impact across the organization. It's not just in your operational area. So there's various things like that that can give you an indication that maybe you should start thinking about putting a little bit of project structure around this. And on the And what's the first thing you do? What's the first thing you do? If you think you're going to put some structure around this and turn it into a project, what is the very first thing you do? You have to work out who the project sponsor is. You can't have a project without a leader. So get your project sponsor in place, empower them, and then they can put the project board in place, choose a project manager, start to push things forward. Sorry, I get very enthusiastic when I start talking about this.

Fatimah Abbouchi 20:27

No, no, I am because I feel like there's a big organizational gap around the operational side of the input. So we we all depend on operational teams for projects to be handed over to to be successful, to be our SMEs. And I just feel like they constantly get neglected. And I was laughing when you were when you started mentioning the what to look for for when it's a project, because I've seen some examples and I've wondered if you'd seen some too, where something is clearly not a project, like uh um a small, you know, Valentine's Day campaign for some packaging or um creating a newsletter for the month where people treat them as project and then overlay governance. That's so unnecessary. So I'm sure you've seen some examples like that as well.

Ross Garland 21:12

Oh, most definitely. Yeah, people just get a little bit carried away. Um they've been on a project um management course and they think, well, this is a project, whereas you know, in actual fact, it's just an operational activity that needs to get done by a certain date.

Fatimah Abbouchi 21:28

Exactly. Exactly. Common misconceptions.

Accountability Means Empowering A Sponsor

Fatimah Abbouchi 21:32

You mentioned so you were talking about accountability or accountability, um rolling it up to accountability. So in every framework, training, program, book, everything you see uses the word accountability. You see it across every organization, but very few organizations actually practically operationalize accountability properly. Now, governance helps to drive accountability. So, how does real accountability get driven by? Well, in the context of P3 and being project portfolio program for those that are wondering what P3 means.

Ross Garland 22:07

Projects, programs, and portfolios. Look, accountability in P3G is the key concept, the single most important concept in governance. What's interesting is that when people hear accountability, quite often they think about who is to blame when things go wrong. Who do we pin this on when things go wrong? And that should not be what accountability is about. Accountability is about empowering somebody. So what you need is an organization who in the project and program space has a process for identifying who should be accountable for a project or program. Now that should be a transparent process, yeah? And it's a logical process. So look in the guide, Principle Three. It'll explain how it works. Now the concept is when they're seeking somebody to be accountable for a particular project or program, and they say, okay, we follow the process and it's going to be this person here. What does that do? The whole organization says, yep, that makes sense, understand that. And they think, right, we know what a project sponsor does. This person needs to start driving things forward. So they drive things forward. Now, not like a dictator, but everyone knows it's their role to push this project forward, to build up momentum. And they don't have to ask permission. They don't have to, you know, pussyfoot around with other people. They just say, this is what I want to do. And they get other people on the board to support them. And it enables the organization to move forward with that project quite quickly. Now, if you don't have that process, then what happens is, and I've seen this many times with projects, is you'll have a group of executives together. They know that things have to get done, but because no one is being held accountable, they don't want to step on each other's toes. So it becomes a very slow process of consensus building. And it's too slow for a project's need. You need that single point of accountability for the success of the project. You need that person appointed so that they can start pushing the process forward. And like I say, that doesn't mean they act as a dictator, because if you take any project board, 99% of all decisions are likely to be consensual. It's just that 1% that needs to be nudged forward a little bit. So yeah, that's the importance of accountability. It's absolutely critical in the project and program space.

Fatimah Abbouchi 24:50

Oh, if not, everybody, you you don't know who's working on what. There's no um delegated responsibility from those that are accountable. There's also no way of scaling up and scaling down governance structure when things change on the project and program. We've got a some recent examples where the governance was overbuilt for what was needed and now it's being scaled down. But unless you take the time to focus on that, I think it's really hard for people to see the forest from the trees. So um accountability is something I think a lot of organizations tend to get wrong. When you when you think about, I mean, a lot of actually probably two questions, but let me go to one of the ones that's really really stands out

Business Cases As Ongoing Decision Tools

Fatimah Abbouchi 25:29

for me. When you spend so much time doing training, what's the number one question that you find that you get asked, you know, from all the training that you do?

Ross Garland 25:38

The number one question. I think um I I know when we get to the end of the training, um, and I'm I'm putting more effort into this area, but one of the issues that people have is that whole question about programs. Again, coming back to programs. They understand projects, they understand portfolios, they don't understand programs so much. So I'm making sure we're just about to come out. Well, sometime this year we'll be coming out with an e-learning course, you know, where you can just do it in your own time. And one of the things I'm pushing in there is greater understanding of what a program is and how it works. But um, in terms of the one question, oh, that's a tough one. Is there one question I get asked?

Fatimah Abbouchi 26:30

Or are they always different depending on the the country or the industry?

Ross Garland 26:36

Oh, you get very different uh um questions uh dependent upon the cultures that you're dealing with. Um so for instance, single point of accountability um can be uh challenging in some cultures, uh whereas in uh European cultures it tends to just be accepted. Uh so you you get issues um with that. Um you get issues too with um uh with the business case. You know, talking about the business case, one of the things that we push in P3G is that the business case isn't there just to justify the investment and therefore get funding. That's one role of the business case. The other role of the business case is that it should define the project in sufficient detail to the point where any change that's put forward, even after contract award and it's going into implementation, any change to the project can be assessed against the key parameters in the business case. Because if a change is being made, so for instance, the classic would be uh a project where um it's going over budget, the portfolio committee has said there's no more money, so you need to cut scope. So there's a decision to cut scope. What scope do you cut? Now, if it's the delivery people and they're looking at it, what perspective do they have? They look through a lens of saying, what scope do we need to cut that will enable us to bring this in on time and within the new budget? That's what their focus will be. Meanwhile, the business people's focus isn't that at all. They've got one eye on that, but their main eye is on the benefits that they're going to get from this, and they want to make sure that you're not cutting benefits. Now, the only way to make that decision is to look at the impact of any scope change on all aspects of the business case. What will it do to the business case? And that helps you decide what element of scope you can cut.

Fatimah Abbouchi 28:42

It's interesting because a lot of people tend to think that the business case is set and forget and you do it once and that's it. But as you said, as you evolve in a project or a program, particularly for those that are longer in duration, you need to, it's sort of a living document. It needs to continuously be referenced and updated as the program goes, especially as you go to hand over to BIU, which is another challenge. How does P3G reference or talk to the gap in handing over benefits to BIU? And is there a component of the framework and the model that talks to that?

Ross Garland 29:15

Yeah, the whole model's based around that because we were talking about single point of accountability and how you choose them. Well, you choose the person to be accountable for a project as being that business person who will use that project to deliver benefits in the future. So that business person is therefore identified at the very front end. And when the handover occurs, quite often it will be that person to whom it's being handed over. So that person's been involved all the way through. They're the operational person who will be delivering that. So for instance, um, let's say it's a payroll program. You put in a new um um payroll system in place. Well, you make sure that it's the payroll manager who heads up that system, who heads up that project or program. Yeah. So they are in place all the way through. And when it's handed over at the end, who's it handed over to? Well, it's not really a handover, it's the same person. They're in place. That's why you have that continuity of uh business person throughout. Now it's more complicated when you get up into very large projects and programs, but um, the concept remains the same, the principle remains the same.

Fatimah Abbouchi 30:30

And you'd hope that the people remain the same, so you don't have to spend time re-engaging and doing more change and comms to someone new that decides to change uh when you know people leave and come and go, which happens a lot in these long programs as well.

Ross Garland 30:45

It it does, and that's one of the big issues because if the um project sponsor or the SRO is changing, that's a handover of accountability when the new one comes in.

Fatimah Abbouchi 30:57

Yeah.

Ross Garland 30:57

So it needs to be a very formal handover to so that they understand what it is they're taking on, what the business case looks like, what the business outcomes are intended to be, because they have to buy into that.

Fatimah Abbouchi 31:11

Absolutely. And and thinking about um, I'm curious to get your thoughts on something that I I think about a lot.

Why PMOs Matter For Oversight

Fatimah Abbouchi 31:18

And I usually say that in projects and programs, typically having PMO or similar structures, project management offices, for those that are not sure what I mean, is really helpful in a lot of instances because if they're focusing on the governance and you've got delivery focusing on delivery, you're not grading your own homework. Now that's something I reference. I'm not sure if you agree or disagree with that. What's your thoughts on when doing delivery and governance and sometimes ending up having to do both at the same time?

Ross Garland 31:48

Yeah, I agree entirely. I I don't know any organization that's worth its salt, I don't know how it would survive without a PMO. And when I say PMO, I mean PMO operating at the project level, program level, and portfolio level. Any organization with a portfolio committee, it cannot survive without a portfolio office. And that's PMO. So yeah, there's that there's that um issue of not grading your own homework, so the PMO then can make sure that the standards and policies have been applied correctly and so forth, but not just act as a policeman, act as support to the organization. And uh I what I am finding that's an area that organizations are becoming more and more sophisticated in, their their usage of PMO. And it's organizations like yourself that are doing that, that are getting the views out there, and it's helping people in the PMO space to understand how to sell it to um um their superiors in the organization. So PMOs are absolutely critical now, absolutely critical.

Fatimah Abbouchi 33:00

And so on that point, in a situation, there was one recently that I can think of, where the sponsor client company just refuses to spend too much money on an initiative program, let's say, and they want very minimal resources. So let's say that you're the program manager and you don't have access to a PMO and you have to do delivery and the governance. What would be the minimum that you would think of as applicable for governance if you just have limited capacity? What would be the two or three things that you would say is essential?

Ross Garland 33:37

Well, when you say that the program manager um has to do governance, what do you mean by that?

Fatimah Abbouchi 33:45

As in they are running a program, they've got no PMO or governance support coming out from anywhere, they're delivering and they're also governing themselves at the same time.

Ross Garland 33:58

You mean there's no program board or project board above them?

Fatimah Abbouchi 34:02

There's a steering, let's say there's a steering committee and maybe there's a board, but day to day, from an oversight perspective, there's no PMO program management office.

Ross Garland 34:11

Okay, okay.

Fatimah Abbouchi 34:16

Or attempting to, what do you what do you think the program manager or even maybe even a project manager who doesn't have access to governance and oversight? They have to do it themselves and report up to the steering committee. Is there two or three things that you would emphasize to focus on if you were very, very lean?

Ross Garland 34:35

Well, um, what would I focus on? If you want to stay in the job, you focus on reporting because if you get your reporting done well, then at least they understand what's going on. And presumably through the report, when I say they, I mean the project board, and presumably through the reporting, you can make it abundantly clear that you have resource shortfalls. So if you're the project manager and you're not being given the resources, do you write a project plan based upon the resources you have, or do you write a project plan based upon the resources that are necessary? And I would always argue your project plan should reflect what is necessary to deliver the project. Now, if the project board refuses to go along with that, then you've got a big call to make as a project manager. So, you know, my response would be, and my response, don't forget, I'm at the other end of my career, so I can afford to um talk truth to the people. If they're not prepared to give the resources, I'd say, look, I understand why you're doing this, because there will be a reason, but I will revise this plan with the people that I'm allowed to have, and I will show you what we can deliver.

Fatimah Abbouchi 35:57

Yes. Yes, yeah, yes.

Ross Garland 36:00

And if that doesn't work, I'd be inclined to say, you know, you really ought to start looking for another project manager.

Fatimah Abbouchi 36:07

Yeah, it's not going to be successful as a result. It's so interesting because there's so many that are like that. It's um very, very interesting.

Agile Still Needs Fit For Purpose Governance

Fatimah Abbouchi 36:15

Um, I I I have I have read the guide. Um, thank you to your business partner sharing it um when it first came out. So I got to pre-read, I think, one of the very first editions. And I remember there was a sort of a small section, I haven't seen if there's been any revisions recently around agile governance or governance in agile rather. I'm curious to see. I mean, there's been there was over the last five or six years, at least in Australia, some um significant shift in the way governance was looked at. And I'm not sure if you were here at that time, um, but there was a big drop in governance. It was self-governance, self-accountability, and all the delivery teams in agile environments just focused, were told to focus on governing themselves. And there was a lot of PMOs this bit. A lot of the banks dropped a lot of their PMOs and things like that. In that time, obviously things have shifted, but what's your perspective on what's shifted? And has the guide shifted more or less in a different way based on the response to Agile recently?

Ross Garland 37:15

No. Um, the guide hasn't changed since it was first published, but that's only four years ago. Um, there's a couple of things I'd say about agile. To start with, agile shouldn't mean low governance or no governance. Um, I understand the concept of agile and empowering the agile teams and so forth, and that's hugely important. If you don't do that, agile's just gonna fail, isn't it? Um but the fact of the matter remains that all these agile teams that you've got working on stuff requires money, and it's not their money. So it still has to be any project that's delivering using agile, still needs a business case, doesn't have to be war and peace, but it still needs a business case, and it still needs governance, it still needs oversight because it's not their money, and it needs that business person at the um project board or program board. Well, if it's uh if it's agile, it'll be a project board, I guess, at the project board level that's keeping oversight. But that oversight has to fit in with an agile environment. So you don't have monthly board meetings, you have board meetings that work uh uh in coordination with product drops. So you'll have a board meeting after a particular sprint that's going to deliver a decent product. And so the agile team can say, this is what we've done in this time period, you know, with that budget, this is what we've done. And the business has the opportunity to say, great, now let's look to the future. How much more do we want to do? What more functionality do we need, and so forth. So you still need um, you still need governance in place uh to drop off governance and dropping off PMOs, that worries me. That does worry me.

Fatimah Abbouchi 39:13

Yes. Um they are reversing that though. Then the numbers on the I I look at how many positions um on the job boards and things in some of these organizations, and then there's very few organizations that I'm referring to have significantly increased their hiring of PMO roles. So they are trying to undo the and I went into some of these organizations, several of them actually, and actually seen firsthand um the disparity between delivery and governance and the I guess the broken um the the the the broken um or the disconnect actually, the disconnect between areas and and what happens. So um I fully fully agree with that. And I think you know, just talking about you mentioned about some of the shifts. Well, really, I think it in a similar conversation I had it probably four years ago with maybe with Adrian, but was about changing the how, not just the what. So the what governance is governance, as you said, the the governance principles you have in the guide probably are gonna outlast us, but it's the how you apply it, which is client and industry applicable depending on your environment and context. Is that is that what you've seen over the last sort of couple of decades of your work that governance fundamentally, the the core governance things are the same, but it's how we are applying it? What's the biggest shift for you?

Ross Garland 40:37

Well, certainly how you apply. So the guide's based on principles, 10 principles, and as you know. And how you apply those principle principles is what changes when you're dealing with agile. Um so the principle remains the same, but the tactics of the application can vary. Um, so for instance, uh um the project board meetings, instead of uh um having status reports go into project board meetings, they should be using the burn down chart. Yeah, they can use the burn down chart. It's produced um uh during each sprint. So there's no reason why that can't be the the basis of the of the uh status report. And you know, we talk about things like investment gating. And investment gating in the waterfall methodology is based upon iterations of the business case, and it's the evidence base that supports um the release of funds for the next um uh section of work, next stage of work. But in an agile environment, that doesn't work terribly well. So you're always better off in an agile environment basing your um your stages around product drops, because it's the product drops that um is the core of agile. So if you base it around product drops, the project board is having a very sensible conversation based upon what's been delivered to date and what needs to be delivered in the future. So there's various there's various aspects of the governance that changes um in an agile environment. I think in To be honest, I don't think the conversation in governance has progressed sufficiently to start looking at refining it. I think what what I'm finding is you just need to get the basics in place for most organizations. I was dealing recently with a um uh a multinational mining company. Now, this is a huge mining company, and they had no more idea how to govern their projects or programs than any number of organizations that are much, much smaller that I've been in. They really they understood governance, they understood project management, but they didn't understand governance. Governance is about project management is about delivering assets, whereas governance is about protecting investments. It's all about treating the project as an investment in the organization's future. And that that message wasn't there. So I don't think it's about refining governance at the moment. I think if we could just get the basics in place, Fatimah, we'd be a lot better off.

Fatimah Abbouchi 43:25

It's so interesting, isn't it? Like I I've seen a shift in the last 10 years just as a consultant, but 10 years prior, I was just in um just contracting and whatnot. And I have to admit that in that 10 years, I felt like every organization I'd just go and do the same thing. So to your point, the basics. And then from a consulting perspective, I agree with you that seeing firsthand, I mean, we had a conversation with a client just this week, and I had to explain that it the terminology behind racy, which for those listening, you know, responsible, accountable, um, consultant informed, etc. So some of those. Your right fundamentals are still so missing and it's blurred. And so I think that there's really good value in getting, I guess, the guide to be focused on governance is probably a really good thing because the missing ingredient in this sort of environment is governance, which I think is the glue that holds all these things together between projects and operations. So I take your point. I think it's a fair

AI Governance Hype And Getting Basics Right

Fatimah Abbouchi 44:25

one. Do you feel that you're hearing noise around very early days, but in terms of AI and AI governance, it's very early. I'm just starting to sort of see the surface of it and hearing those two terminologies flying around. Have you heard, seen, is there any anything interesting you're hearing in that space?

Ross Garland 44:45

Yeah, certainly hearing a lot about AI. And um so we all know that AI is going to have a major impact in the project management space. Um I'd be surprised if it doesn't have a pretty significant impact in the governance space as well. I could see AI developing a governance framework for um an organization. Um I I would like to think there'd be somebody oversighting that, certainly at the moment, just making sure that what's being put in place makes sense. Pardon me. But I could see that happening. Like the more information with these AIs now, the more information you can import into the AI about your business, the more sophisticated the responses you're getting about how you should respond to um issues and risks and so forth. So I see no reason why AI um could not play um a substantial role in governance. But at the moment, that's all very well and good. But uh the people still need to understand what constitutes good governance. Otherwise, they'll look at what an AI is saying and it won't make sense to them. And of course, it depends upon what you put into the AI as well. You know, if you if you put nonsense in, you're gonna get nonsense out, or if you put in competing approaches, um, the AI is gonna have to try and sort that out too.

Fatimah Abbouchi 46:21

It's very interesting because it it seems like um, at least what was the last five, six years, there was this huge wave of, I don't know how it was in in the in England, but we've seen this really huge influx of agile, and people were trying to get their head around agile and governance and governance in agile and this whole thing. And then now it's seeming like there's this whole shift on governance, AI, AI governance. But what remains true is exactly what we're just saying, the core is good governance, which is required regardless of the transformation, the industry, the business, the size, the scale, governance always applies. So I don't know why people struggle so much with understanding the importance of good governance. I think maybe if they've had some bad past experiences where maybe people have treated as a control mechanism. Um, do you have a thought on that?

Ross Garland 47:10

Yeah, um, sometimes it can be used as control, as I said earlier. If accountability is used as a stick to beat people with, that's not going to encourage people taking on accountability. And uh the other big issue that organizations have is big organizations with large capital um um um portfolios will quite often have an in-house delivery group. You know, and they'll they'll use external contractors, but they'll have an in-house delivery group. And there's always a tendency when you talk about projects in that organization, that thoughts immediately go to the delivery group, and that starts to exclude the business people. And so you need you need uh that understanding that delivery is hugely important, obviously, in the project space, but without the business people involved, you're not going to end up with good business outcomes. And that's an issue with many organizations still. It's becoming less so, but it's still an issue.

Fatimah Abbouchi 48:15

Yeah, they seem to um very much neglect a lot of time the even the fundamental capacity availability of operational resources who, when you don't have that PMO rolling the visibility around resource availability and whatnot, you get all these operational people that are spread across five, ten projects. And it's a wonder they can't, you know, continue just to do their day job. So I think that part there is is a bit broken as well.

Ross Garland 48:43

Yeah, that that's coming back to the portfolio, the role of the portfolio. And what do the people on the portfolio do? Well, without a PMO in place, they can do absolutely nothing because they don't have the time to put the analysis together.

Fatimah Abbouchi 48:56

Yeah, absolutely. Well, hopefully we've seen some of that change. I've definitely seen um for all the work that you know yourself and others and our peers in the PMO space are doing here and abroad, some significant improvement and an increase in visibility on these things that really matter. And we're seeing improvements despite people using the same stats around project failure. So I think that's just a stat that just keeps doing the rounds but has no bearing behind it. So it's really good to see that. Um I do think it's great. Um it's a great guide. I think people should definitely check it out if they haven't already. As you said, it was um created four years ago, still very relevant, um, still touches on all of the key principles that I think underpin good governance today.

Where To Learn More And Wrap

Fatimah Abbouchi 49:39

So um where can people find out more about you and about P3GQA? Where would you like them to go?

Ross Garland 49:46

Just go to the website p3gQA.com, and that's got all the information you need, and it's got a lot of resources on there too. It's got a little maturity model actually that you can fill in in uh in no time at all to give you an idea of where your organization sits in the governance um environment.

Fatimah Abbouchi 50:04

Okay, beautiful. I'll make sure I put that into the show notes. Now, before we wrap up, because I did promise you would be done within the the time we've allocated, but I do love governance and I probably could keep talking to you about this, but we'll have to do another time. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners? Call to action, a piece of advice, or a question to ponder?

Ross Garland 50:26

Um, look, no project manager or PMO can be successful unless the governance in the organization is efficient and effective. Um, and if you need efficient and effective governance, have a look at the guide. Get to the guide. It's got lots of the appendices in the guide have got lots and lots of information, um, you know, about terms of reference, what an enterprise governance framework would look like, all sorts of good stuff in there. So, you know, it was written by myself and Adrian Morey. We're both consultants. We wrote it on the basis of what do you need to know when the boss says sort the governance out on this project or program. So if you're in that position, that's where you go.

Fatimah Abbouchi 51:13

Sounds good. Well said. Thank you, Ross. And uh hope to see you at the PMO Leader conference later this year. I know Adrian's been there a few times, so maybe we'll see you on the card later this year.

Ross Garland 51:24

Excellent. I'd love to be there, Fatimah.

Fatimah Abbouchi 51:26

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