Programme Governance and Planning

Programme governance is not bureaucracy. It is the framework that protects complex technology investments from the failure modes that derail the majority of large IT programmes. Without structured governance, scope drifts, decisions stall, risks accumulate unnoticed, and the board loses visibility of what is actually happening.

Elisabeth Butler establishes governance frameworks that are proportionate to programme complexity, practical to operate, and genuinely useful for decision making. She does not impose templates for the sake of process. Every governance element she implements serves a specific purpose in protecting delivery.

What Elisabeth's Governance Framework Includes

• Programme board: Structured decision making forum with senior stakeholder authority, regular cadence, and clear terms of reference
• RAID management: Active management of risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies with defined ownership and regular review
• Change control: Formal process for managing scope changes with business case approval and impact assessment
• Status reporting: Honest, consistent reporting that gives the board real visibility of programme health
• Escalation paths: Defined routes for escalating issues that cannot be resolved within the programme team
• Benefits tracking: Measurement of programme outcomes against the benefits that justified the investment

Programme Planning

Elisabeth develops programme plans that are realistic, trackable, and useful. She defines workstreams, milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, and critical path activities. Her plans account for the realities of organisational capacity, vendor lead times, and the change management requirements that technology programmes invariably underestimate.

Related reading:

• IT Governance Frameworks for Complex Programmes
• The Real Cost of Getting IT Project Governance Wrong