Project Board Duties and Behaviours for effective leadership

December 13, 2020
Posted By PMCompanion

The operation of effective leadership in a project board comprised of executive, sponsor, senior user and suppliers is essential for the success of the project outcome. Although their role can be demanding, combining responsibility for business as usual operations with operational improvement and developing new products/services.

To understand how project board members, need to face these challenges, the following should be considered:

What should projects expect from the project board?
What should the project board expect from project managers?
How does the project leadership delegate and still retain control?
What kind of decisions are the project leaders expected to make?
What is the composition of an effective project board?

By establishing an environment which is clear about how a project will be run, which includes defined roles and responsibilities, helps ensure the project leadership does not micromanage the project manager.

Creating this controlled environment means that everyone should understand the project management method or framework adopted by the project or organisation as a whole.

As a result, this allows project managers to make decisions by providing a mechanism for this to happen. It also determines the tolerance levels exercised by the project board. This is ‘managing by exception”, one of the principles of the PRINCE2 framework.

The project framework or method should be clear about the role of senior management and the project board. Above all, that should incorporate the specific duties and preferred behaviours of senior leadership throughout a project. They include:

Accepting that the project executive and board member, are ultimately accountable for project success – supporting, directing and steering the project to completion
Assigning a project manager but not, thereafter, relinquishing responsibility and effectively “disappearing” for the duration of the project
Organizing and endorsing an integrated, cross-functional approach typical of many project team structures
Ensuring there is ongoing user involvement and commitment to the proposed change
Employing the continuous business justification concept (or adding value in Agile approaches) to ensure the business case remains valid and therefore the project is viable, deliverable and desirable. If so, senior management will be responsible for authorising each subsequent stage of the project
Ensuring there aren’t too many projects running in parallel to maximise success
Providing unified direction, communication and being an effective leader for the project manager in a collaborative and facilitative way; this is essential in Agile project scenarios where transparency and collaboration keeps the project on schedule and de-risked
Ensuring project managers and teams are empowered to make decisions – absence of this is a principal reason for project failure
Escalation: to make sure decisions are made at the right level and avoid “decision latency” – another reason for project failure.
Having regular project board meetings scheduled, but also reviewing their necessity when there are no key decisions to make, such as moving to a next stage or altering project scope
Diagnosing and avoiding problems – where are the weak spots in the plans? What are the risk management and mitigation plans?
Taking responsibility for delivering benefits to the organisation.

By hosting project board awareness sessions is one, effective way of improving the overall performance of project boards, interaction with project managers and overall project leadership.

In facilitating these sessions, it helps project boards to fully understand the project management method principles adopted by the project/organisation and ensure they too know how to adhere to the principles.

It’s also an opportunity to discuss the ideal behaviour of senior management in the project, such as accountability, offering unified direction, knowing how to cope with delegation, effective communication and allocation of resources.

Equally, it’s useful to project boards to recognize the importance of building relationships with their project managers. For example, knowing what keeps the project manager awake at night helps project leadership identify when and where to take action to ensure success for the project and organisation.

Having a greater awareness among project board members about the factors that contribute to either project success or failure will help them make the connection to the abilities and skills they need for effective project leadership.

And that might also include gathering facts on the ground in their own organisation about which principles and practices are needed to improve their project board performance.

Developing and being able to deploy a wide variety of project leadership skills is essential throughout the life-cycle of a project and, not least, at the points where project boards are required to make significant decisions. This demands serious understanding and preparation as, at the point of decision, they need all the knowledge and evidence to commit the organisation’s budget and resources with confidence. Let us know your thoughts on the role of the leadership team and if they have assisted or hindered your project delivery. All the very best on your project management journey.

Project Board Duties and Behaviours for effective leadership | Project Management Companion