The team building article is only about the lesson learned during multiple projects. Today I will discuss only the steering committee. It is not my intention to discuss the importance or the function of the steering committee.
Lesson learned.
1. Make the fast decision
2. Having the ability to investigate the reports or take the feedback from the assigned sub-team to understand the ground reality of the project
3. Open door policy
4. Set the project exit criteria
5. Set the project “Go Live” criteria
- Make the fast Decision:
Decision-making is a critical task for the committee. It has been observed that everybody in the team wants to play safe. Nobody wants to take the risk to decide on a time. However, it proves that the project always needs quick decisions to roll out the outcomes.
2. Investigation or the project on the ground reality
Many team members are lazy or have big egos not to ask or investigate the progress report or validate the ground reality. It may have multiple reasons why they are not doing it.
3. Exit and Success criteria
At the beginning of the project, it has to be decided and multiple factors to get out of the project if it is not viable anymore. It means include the cost, time duration, or any other factor that can contribute to it.
Similarly, the project success factors should be defined clearly early in the project charter. It isn’t easy to meet the 100% objective of any project. However, this is the steering committee’s responsibility to define or agree on the project’s success criteria.
This is not a comprehensive list of steering committee failure points, but I have limited observation on many projects. This article is not to make you agree or disagree but to inform you, which could be the case.
Kamran Ahmed