To celebrate World Quality Week 2023, Shirley Parsons Senior Associate Simon Vear explains how implementing the right governance and assurance framework helps a global organisation in a rapidly changing environment.
Background.
During the last eight years, a global power infrastructure company had doubled in size, and Senior leaders were concerned that delivery risks are rising due to reliance on governance and assurance structures that were developed for a smaller business.
With a further doubling in size expected by 2030, they needed a new, scalable framework to prevent cost escalations associated with loss of control and oversight.
Implementation.
In order to implement this, the work was undertaken in four phases:
1. An assessment of the current governance and assurance framework, looking at its maturity across 40 different aspects.
This assessment was the outcome of three strands of work, including interviews with leaders from across the business, observations of a range of governance frameworks, an extensive review of business documentation and reports. Together these provided a clear understanding of the current practices, and how they compare with world-class practices.
2. The second phase was a cross-industry benchmarking exercise, looking at how ten other companies addressed similar issues. This included both direct competitors and businesses in adjacent fields and provided an understanding of how different businesses had applied good practice, and the trade-offs they had made in their business management designs.
3. In the third phase, through a mixture of interviews and workshops, twenty distinct actions were developed across five areas: The governance meetings; developing personal accountabilities; structuring the business; getting the right information to the right places at the right time; and process improvements to reduce delivery risks.
4. During the final phase, the proposed actions were shared with project managers and leaders from across the globe, refining and de-risking the changes. A comprehensive implementation plan was developed.
Results and benefits.
The organisation now has a new, clear scalable, governance and assurance framework, designed to improve competitive advantage and de-risk delivery. This framework has been agreed with over 100 leaders across the globe and will be implemented in 2024.