In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation. Show Plutora Blog - Business Intelligence, Release Management, Software Development, Value Stream Management Reading time 7 minutes There you are, staring at a blank document preparing to write a proposal that you’ve been told needs to be sent to a steering committee. Or maybe you’ve been told that a product you’re developing needs to change direction. It could even be that you’ve been tasked with forming a steering committee for your organization. Steering committees are one of the most mature and widespread IT management practices. They’re also found outside IT, especially on project-based work. So chances are that you will continue to come across them directly or indirectly. Whatever the case, you’re here now, trying to find out more about steering committees so that you can understand what’s going on and put your best piece of work forward. Either way, I’ve got you covered. In this post, I’ll not only cover what steering committees are but also the role of a steering committee, how it can increase business value, and how to ensure a steering committee makes the right decisions with the right data. Finally, I’ll give you an example to illustrate the value of good data.
Build governance into engineering workflows with Plutora Adapt governance to meet engineering teams where they are for continuous compliance and automatic auditability. Learn MoreWhat Is a Steering CommitteeA steering committee is an advisory body that’s part of IT—or other—governance. Members include experts, authority figures, and senior stakeholders in a project or organization. As a result, they have a significant stake in how each project is managed. Thus, key concerns for steering committees are the direction, scope, budget, timeliness, and methods used. Steering committees generally meet periodically to discuss each of these aspects and help set, or reset, direction. Who Is on a Steering CommitteeMembers of the steering committee don’t usually perform the work they prescribe. Instead, senior managers or executives, important external stakeholders, and experts usually make up the committee. The particular makeup of each steering committee depends on the scope. For example, a project steering committee may involve the project manager and external stakeholders from customers. Meanwhile, an organizational steering committee may be made up of executives, certain board members, and department heads. While the actual makeup of each steering committee may vary slightly, there are a few guidelines to keep in mind. Arguably most important, there should be a chairperson. The chairperson should be elected by the rest of the committee and should not own the project the committee is steering. This allows for more impartial chairing. In addition, the steering committee should be made up of diverse members. Moreover, these members should equally represent the various functions the steering committee oversees. This allows for the sharing of different opinions and ideas. In parallel, the committee must allow for open discussion so that each opinion can be heard and assessed. Finally, it must have clear goals and a well-managed agenda. What Is Its RoleA steering committee is an advisory group that makes directional decisions on various organizational projects. Its members directly support project managers working toward strategic company directions. In practice steering committees also do the following:
How a Steering Committee Increases ValueConsidering the range of functions steering committees provide, it might seem quite clear that they can increase business and project value. When working well, steering committees increase value by keeping projects on track, budgets in check, risks mitigated, and conflicts resolved. The fact that all of this happens apart from daily operations means the value gain is accentuated. However, there’s a fine line between successful governance practices that increases value and bureaucratic governance practices that waste time and lead to poor decisions. Assuming a steering committee has followed the guidelines of having a chairperson, diverse members, and openness with clear goals, it’s a matter of what goes in that determines what comes out. Therefore, data is arguably the biggest contributor to value gain. Making the Right Decisions With the Right DataTo gain the most value from a steering committee, it’s vital that the data is meaningful and understandable. Bad or incomprehensible data can jeopardize the ability of the steering committee to make informed and timely decisions. Usable data, on the other hand, facilitates clear communication and correctly represents the current state of events. This raises the question: how do you ensure the right data goes to the steering committee? Enter business intelligence, or BI. Broadly speaking, business intelligence is the practice of collecting, storing, and analyzing organizational activities to generate reports, identify trends, and measure performance. The sole function of business intelligence is to improve and inform management decisions. (For more information, check out any of these Plutora blog posts that cover different aspects of BI). It’s a match made in heaven. Implementing business intelligence practices allows companies to automatically or periodically generate reports and dashboards that can be viewed by steering committees. These reports and dashboards are all but guaranteed to contain meaningful data as they can be filled with metrics that have been defined as being important by the steering committee. All of this facilitates a better understanding of projects and progress, which allows steering committees to communicate clearly and make the right decisions in a timely manner. Example: Value Stream FlowsI thought it best to provide a quick example of how the right data via BI can help steering committees increase value. If we quickly look at Plutora’s value streams dashboard and consider ourselves part of the steering committee, we can assess the value of good data.  On this dashboard, we can see which pieces of work are on schedule (blue or blue and gray), which pieces of work are experiencing delays (orange), and how much progress each piece of work has made through its planned time (amount of gray). With this information, steering committee members can choose to reallocate resources and make up for delays. They can also decide to drill down into specific projects or value streams to see what may have caused any delays. All of this from one well-constructed BI dashboard that contains good data. Now consider the opposite. Without BI, the steering committee would have to hunt for this data in every single one of those cells. That’s thirty individual hunts where it could easily pick up misleading or bad data. The committee would then need to consider each data set individually, bring it all together, and try to make the same decision that would be possible in just a couple of minutes with a BI dashboard. Clearly, making the right data available to a steering committee is vital in maximizing its value.
A steering committee is a group of people that decide on the priorities of business within an organization, and then manage the general course of these operations. Of course, involving information technology in any business objective, including a steering committee can change the look, and sometimes the purpose. Enter the IT Steering Committee. A 2012 industry study ranked the use of IT steering committees as the most mature IT management practice out of 15 practices. The study defined maturity as widely adopted and fully practiced. This article introduces the role of an IT steering committee and how to adopt a useful committee for your organization. (This tutorial is part of our IT Leadership & Best Practices Guide. Use the right-hand menu to navigate.) Defining ITSCsSteering committees may already exist within your organization. But a steering committee specific to IT may be something new. Many companies have developed specific IT steering committees (ITSC) in order to bring together both IT and business officials in order to make decisions that affect both vital areas. ITSC are often adopted to promote teamwork between the IT teams and direct business teams, in order to support growth and change that align with the overall business mission. A steering committee is typically comprised of employees in positions of authority within the organization, as they’re tasked with both the ability and authority to make strategic decisions. These members can include departmental heads as well as executives. In contrast to teams of workers, members of a steering committee typically are not involved in performing the work. Instead, they have a significant stake in the work being completed timely, on budget, and within the agreed methods. Goals of the IT Steering CommitteeITSCs can have various goals depending on your organization. For many, the primary goal is to provide strategic direction. This can apply to the entire organization, not merely the IT team and its products. ITSCs are likely to make decisions regarding prioritizing business and IT projects, discussing how IT services apply to non-IT business needs, and ensuring IT best practices, such as security and disaster recovery plans. A secondary goal of an ITSC may be to support projects as defined by the committee. This could include providing guidance to specific teams who have requested IT support (e.g., if the project’s ideas align with current IT practices or if proposed IT ideas are truly the best action for the business), offering advice to executives on IT strategies and spending, and determining the criteria for issues that the ITSC will consider in future. Tips for Organizing Effective IT Steering CommitteesCombining high-level IT and business leaders can often feel like butting heads: IT seemingly values things that business leaders may not prioritize, and vice versa. It’s easy to feel like the ITSC isn’t getting anywhere.
With a clear-cut mission and a reliance on business in the decision-making process, the ITSC can become a vital, collaborative way to ensure business needs are met.
These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion. See an error or have a suggestion? Please let us know by emailing . |
What role does the Information Systems Steering Committee play in the systems development process group of answer choices?
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