Most organisations have too many governance committees and most of them make too few decisions. A steering group that meets monthly to hear updates isn’t governing anything — it’s being kept informed. A project board that never challenges a project’s continued viability isn’t adding value — it’s providing cover.
Getting your committee structures right is one of the highest-leverage governance improvements you can make. Here’s how to think about it.
The three structures you actually need
Project Board — keeping one project on track
A project board exists to provide oversight and make decisions for a single project. It typically includes the project sponsor (who chairs it), key business stakeholders, and occasionally a senior user and senior supplier representative.
The project manager attends but doesn’t chair — they report to the board, not run it. This distinction matters. A project manager chairing their own governance board has no independent oversight.
What it should do: Review project health, make decisions on escalated issues, approve stage completions, and give or withhold authority to proceed.
What it shouldn’t do: Manage the project. The board governs; the project manager manages.
How often: Monthly for active projects, or at the end of each stage (whichever is more frequent). Don’t convene it just to hear that everything is fine — if there’s nothing to decide, send a written update instead.
Steering Group — managing across a programme
A steering group operates at programme or theme level — overseeing a group of related projects rather than a single one. It’s most useful when projects share resources, have dependencies on each other, or are working toward a common strategic goal.
Who should be on it: Senior sponsors from the relevant business areas, the programme manager, and often the PMO lead. Keep it small — five to seven people maximum. More than that and it becomes a briefing meeting, not a decision-making body.
What it should do: Resolve cross-project conflicts, prioritise when resources are constrained, make decisions that affect multiple projects simultaneously, and escalate portfolio-level issues upward.
The most common failure: Steering groups that meet monthly but only hear status updates. If the only output of a steering group meeting is “noted,” the meeting isn’t necessary. Every agenda should have at least one actual decision.
Portfolio Board — the highest level
A portfolio board operates at the strategic level — reviewing the entire change portfolio and making investment decisions. This is where projects get approved, prioritised, paused, or stopped.
Who should be on it: Executive leadership — typically the CEO or COO, CFO, and functional directors. The PMO presents; executives decide.
What it should do: Ensure the project portfolio is aligned to strategy, that investment is going to the right places, that resource capacity isn’t being exceeded, and that the benefits from completed projects are being realised.
How often: Quarterly is usually sufficient, with an exception process for urgent investment decisions between cycles.
Making committees actually work
The difference between governance committees that add value and ones that don’t usually comes down to three things:
Pre-read discipline. Papers go out at least three working days before the meeting. Members read them before they arrive. The meeting is for discussion and decision, not for the project manager to walk everyone through a document in real time.
Decision focus. Every agenda item is either a decision or an exception. Routine updates that require no action should be written, not presented. If a project is green and on track, one paragraph in a summary report is sufficient. The meeting time is for the amber and red items that need human judgment.
Honest reporting. Committees only work if the information they receive is accurate. If your culture punishes people for reporting problems, problems will be hidden until they become crises. The PMO’s job is to create an environment where honest reporting is safe — and to call out the pattern when a project stays green right up until it catastrophically fails.
Key takeaways
- Three structures cover most organisations: Project Board (one project), Steering Group (a programme), Portfolio Board (the whole portfolio)
- Project managers report to boards — they don’t chair them
- Every committee meeting needs at least one real decision on the agenda
- Honest reporting is the foundation — governance fails when problems get hidden
- Keep committees small. Five to seven people make decisions. Twenty people hear presentations.