October 17, 2024
October 17, 2024
Change governance plays a critical role in overseeing the investment and execution of change initiatives across organizations. At its core, it relies on standardized governance frameworks built on controls, templates, and processes. However, the success of these frameworks depends on the people involved—whether they’re driving the changes or impacted by them.
Here’s how the key stakeholders in change governance operate:
- Portfolio Management: The team responsible for implementing the governance framework and serving as the first line of defense.
- Change Management: Teams that execute initiatives and ensure compliance with governance standards.
- Change Participants: Individuals involved in change projects, each with responsibilities tied to governance.
- Control Functions: Internal audit or other functions tasked with independently testing the effectiveness of change governance.
1. Ensuring Adherence to Standards (Portfolio Management) : Portfolio Management teams set the rules through processes, templates, and training. Yet, despite best efforts, Change Management teams may fail to adhere to standards or rely on outdated versions.
How ITMs Help: ITMs automatically ensure that the latest templates and control measures are used. Key milestones and embedded processes mean teams can’t bypass important steps, making adherence both easy and enforceable.
2. Real-Time Reporting (Portfolio Management) : Monitoring the health of the portfolio is vital, yet manual reporting often burdens teams, creating friction between portfolio management and change teams.
How ITMs Help: ITMs automate reporting by allowing milestone owners to update the status of their deliverables. This is supported by automated reporting, providing real-time status updates from project milestones. This eliminates the need for constant follow-up, allowing the portfolio management team to focus on strategic oversight instead of operational delays.
3. Evidencing Compliance (Change Management) : Executing teams are required to show evidence of adherence to governance standards, which can often be seen as a distraction from the actual work.
How ITMs Help: With ITMs, the process of adhering to standards is built into workflows. Templates with embedded milestones and sign-offs reduce the workload, while real-time reporting minimizes the effort required to provide evidence of compliance.
4. Testing Adherence (Control Functions): Internal audit functions need to test adherence, but with limited resources, they can't deeply assess every initiative, instead relying on risk-based sampling.
How ITMs Help: ITMs provide real-time insights into the status of initiatives, allowing control functions to focus on high-risk projects. These functions can also join collaboration spaces to access documents and gain insights into team dynamics.
5. Building a Governance-Oriented Culture : Developing a culture of governance is essential for ensuring consistent adherence to standards across all teams.
How ITMs Help: ITMs foster this culture by creating spaces where teams can share insights and learn from one another. Recognition and mentoring systems further promote and reward governance-related behaviors, encouraging a stronger, more governance-conscious workforce.
While promoting and maintaining effective governance is always a challenge, leveraging an Internal Talent Marketplace can transform change governance by improving consistency, real-time oversight, and team accountability. These tools foster a culture of compliance and collaboration, making governance easier to manage at scale.
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