Transparent and effective governance is key to the success of any Pega Express project. At Pega, governance best practices establish a framework of engagement at all levels of the organization.

What is governance?

Governance creates a framework of engagement across all levels of the organization, to manage decisions and report on project progress. Our multilevel framework engages the necessary stakeholders during the project. It provides the right information to the right parties at the right time. A multilevel framework can be seen in the figure below. This consists of four hierarchical levels, starting with the scrum team, then the project team, next comes the project sponsor level and ultimately ending at formal corporate governance forum. The following diagram shows the 4 levels of a multi-level governance structure.

The framework contains policies, processes, and standards throughout the project to address day-to-day issues and strategic level decisions. The framework includes information on the following subjects: 

• Roles and Responsibilities 

• Communication Plan 

• Progress Tracking 

• Risk and Issue Management 

• Change and Scope Management 

• Quality Management 

• Agreed upon definitions: Definition of Done and Definition of Ready 

What is the value of governance?

Projects encounter issues and changes from many sources throughout the lifecycle. Teams must adapt rapidly to stay on track and deliver successful business outcomes. Project Governance ensures that everyone agrees on how to react to unforeseen circumstances. It ensures that project teams adjust to unforeseen circumstances in a way that is visible and consistent from all project stakeholders.  A solid governance framework can reduce the chance of project failure.  

When does governance take place?

Established Governance at the start of a project and continue it throughout the lifespan of your releases. Doing so involves immediately scheduling recurring multi-level governance meetings, from the daily stand up call, to more senior project and steering-committee-level sessions. Additionally, you need to complete and share the the following information with the team:

• Cadence and format of project reporting
• Risk and issue logs
• Project standards, such as defining ready and done

Also, you need to finalize the change management process and shared it with the appropriate project stakeholders. These best practices establish the framework that operate throughout all of your Pega Express™ releases.