The first half of this chapter has presented the evidence that projects can only be effectively governed when the most fundamental concepts are understood and accepted: (a) Projects are undertaken to realise some kind of organisational benefit, (b) benefits are seldom realised at the time of implementation and (c) benefits tend to be enabled by IT projects but tend only to be realised through accompanying organisational change. Project governance should therefore focus on clarifying what benefits are being targeted, what organisational changes need to be made to realise the benefits, whether the organisation has the capacity (and will) to make the necessary changes, and whether the benefits are being realised. Related to this is the issue of appointing a sponsor to be responsible for realising the benefits and choosing and implementing measure(s) to monitor on an ongoing basis whether the benefits are being realised.

This synthesis of the key aspects of project governance has been rigorously justified (Young 2005) and documented for the general public (Young, forthcoming). Considerations of length prevent a detailed explanation of the justification but it should be highlighted that it confirmed what has long been suspected Markus 1983), that top management support is the most important success factor. Project governance guidelines must therefore focus on top management responsibilities first. The existing prescriptions (e.g. project planning, project management, project staff, user involvement, etc.) do not need to be overly emphasised because they are already in widespread practice (Clegg et al 1997) and the failure statistics show quite clearly that they alone are not sufficient for success Young and Jordan 2005).

It should also be highlighted that the guidelines being presented in this chapter have taken into account all the relevant models of how IT projects deliver benefits (Yardley 2002, Akkermans and van Helden 2002, McGolpin and Ward 1997, Reich and Benbasat 1990, Soh and Markus 1995, Grover and Kettinger 2000, Markus 2000, Sharma and Yetton 2003) and well over 40 different prescriptions for top management support. What was found was that almost all the existing prescriptions focus on the ‘hard’ dimensions of governance (e.g. steering committees, governance processes, etc) and did not capture the essence of how top managers influenced projects to succeed. It was found that the ‘soft’ dimensions of governance (e.g. passion to drive change, belief in what is necessary, will to change, listening, communicating and influencing skills) were much more important and that they completely underpinned the effectiveness of whatever hard prescriptions were adopted.