Checklist for project governance

Define clear and realistic project goals

Done?	Task
✓	Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
✓	Map your goals to actions and measures that help you track and evaluate them.
✓	Translate your goals into project deliverables that define the scope and quality of your solution.
✓	Monitor your goals regularly throughout the project lifecycle and adjust them as needed.
✓	Align your goals with the expectations and needs of relevant stakeholders across the organization.
✓	Communicate your goals clearly and consistently to the implementation team.

Done?	Task
✓	Organize your project into business streams that correspond to functional workstreams, such as finance, sales, or operations.
✓	Involve the business stream owners directly in the project to ensure their input and feedback.
✓	Secure strong executive sponsorship and active engagement from senior business stakeholders within each business stream.
✓	Encourage cross-team collaboration by involving members of each workstream in other workstreams to avoid working in silos.
✓	Plan and budget the project resources according to the effort and complexity of the project.
✓	Define accountability and responsibility at the project leadership level. Give each stream owner autonomy and empowerment to make decisions.
✓	Identify relevant project roles and areas of ownership. Assign them to team members with the right expertise and experience.

Done?	Task
✓	Analyze, review, and confirm that your chosen implementation methodology works well with the business and project constraints and circumstances.

Done?	Task
✓	Establish an effective steering group that understands enough of the project details to actively steer it based on meaningful, actionable, and evidence-based information.
✓	Create a risk register with meaningful and actionable risks that align with project priorities.
✓	Update the risk register regularly and address the risks proactively.
✓	Implement stage gate or milestone-driven planning and reviews as checkpoints to better track and communicate implications of the project status.
✓	Define clear criteria for each stage gate or milestone that indicate whether the project is ready to move to the next phase.
✓	Conduct regular reviews at each stage gate or milestone to assess the status, quality, and risks of the project deliverables.
✓	Implement a design review board to ensure new designs and changes operate within the boundaries of the solution blueprint and don't adversely affect other designs.
✓	Define clear roles, responsibilities, processes, and standards for the design review board.
✓	Conduct regular design reviews to validate, approve, or reject design proposals.

Learn more about how to define clear and measurable project goals that align with your business objectives
Learn more about how to set up an efficient and effective project organization
Learn more about how to choose the best project approach for your project
Learn more about how to evaluate and improve classic governance structures etc. in key project areas
Learn more about how to create a well-structured project plan that helps you track progress
Review the main points from this section in our conclusion
Read a real-world example of how a customer implemented Dynamics 365 with effective project governance in our case study