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Project Governance – Remember it Using “SADBET”

Paul Naybour Paul Naybour

Published: 23rd December 2012

Paul Naybour, Business Development Director at Parallel Project Training, talks about Project Governance; what it is and how you can remember it with a simple mnemonic. This short video is particularly useful as a framework for those preparing for the APMP exam.
A full transcript of this video is given below.
 
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9z9pIhDYNY[/youtube]
 
One of the topics that people struggle with in the APMP exam is governance of projects. Governance of projects is about the oversight that the board of directors have of the management of projects. One way to remember what project governance is all about is with the mnemonic SADBET. SADBET stands for:
First of all STRATEGY – is the project strategically aligned with the goals of the organisation? So is it part of our strategy; does it fit with what we want to deliver as an organisation?
ACCOUNTABILITY – this is the second part of project governance. Have the accountabilities for the deliverables of the project been clearly defined so that we know, as a board, who is responsible for the execution and completion of that project.
The third part is DISCLOSURE – quite often projects are not totally honest with their status so having good disclosure means  that the Board will know what the status of the project really is and can decide if they want to communicate that to the external stakeholders or not.
Then there is BUSINESS CASE – is there a business case? Is it robust or is it a “rubber duck” project, as we used to call them; ones that just pop up and you can’t kill them – no matter what you do they just pop back up again!
EXTERNAL EVALUATION – is the project subject to peer review so somebody from outside the project comes in and looks at the project and makes sure it is still robust.
And finally, TERMINATE – is there a way to terminate a project that is no longer viable? Can we close out projects that no longer have a business case?
 
So SADBET is just a good way of understanding what project governance is all about – a framework that can help people when they are preparing for their exam.

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