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The importance of good governance: public-sector projects research
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New research from APM shows that governance in large-scale public-sector projects is key to their success. Headline findings from the report show that there are clearly gaps in knowledge but also in available guidance:
- Some areas of governance have very little research with no firm guidance on effective project governance. These areas include complexity, assurance, the informal phase, avoiding excess optimism and benefits realisation and maturity models.
- The research indicates that an assurance system is an integral part of governance and should be developed together with the governance system.
- The research recognises two fundamentally different types of project – fixed-target and moving-target, – which need different governance and assurance systems
- The research has identified that there have been cases of metric manipulation reported.
- The research notes that many problems with major public investment projects begin before the project gets the go ahead. There are therefore opportunities to re-scope and improve the projects. The researchers suggest that soft analysis methods are important in helping to ‘see through complexity’ and inform major decisions, and so should be applied to all major projects to identify the most critical issues and risks ahead of time and ahead of the final decision to go ahead.