No Bad Questions About Project Management
Definition of Steering committee
What is a steering committee?
A steering committee is an IT management practice applied to long-term, complex, and costly projects that hold significant value and risks for a company. A steering committee is not involved directly in the project and serves as an advisory body to, as its name suggests, steer the project in the right direction according to changing realities. Steering committees typically include experts, authority figures, and senior stakeholders who meet regularly to discuss the scope and direction of the project as well as its budgets and resource allocation.
Who should be on the steering committee?
The actual makeup of a steering committee depends on a particular project’s scope and team; however, it usually includes experts, authority figures on the project topic, and senior executives. The main criterion is that no committee members should be directly working on the project, as their role is to advise impartially and provide an objective perspective on the project's progress.
This differs from a project committee, which includes the project manager, employees from the departments connected with the deliverables, and, sometimes, customers and end-users. Steering committees involve higher-level employees given the need to manage a project that impacts a company's strategy and may require a large amount of the business's resources. The leader of a steering committee is the chairperson, who the other members select to oversee the group's work.
What is the role of the steering committee?
The role of a steering committee is to make executive-level decisions on projects that impact a company's strategy and require considerable resources. Other tasks branch off of this crucial responsibility:
- Resolve strategic issues
- Approve budgets
- Provide strategic direction
- Allocate resources
- Engage with stakeholders
- Govern and oversee
- Control changes and risks
- Monitor performance and control reporting
In all these tasks, the steering committee acts as an impartial body of experts with a full-picture view of the project that can effectively steer the team to a result that matches the company's vision.
What is the difference between a working group and a steering committee?
A steering committee oversees a project as a whole by providing guidance and making decisions on how the project's resources can be spent. It exists for as long as the project is underway. A working group, on the other hand, exists within the steering committee. Depending on the project and the problems that occur within it, there may be several working groups at once. These groups are formed to resolve a specific issue of the project and are dissolved once their task has been completed. For example, a company wants to develop a new AI tool that will outpace all other tools. A steering committee will oversee the project’s budget and resource allocation and set the work's scope and direction. Then, they need to create a working group to hire employees for this project. When the project team has been formed, the working group will be dismissed. The steering committee will continue to oversee the project.
Key Takeaways
- A steering committee is a management practice applied to long-term projects that involve significant resources and hold important value for a company.
- Steering committees typically include experts, authority figures on the project topic, and senior executives who aren’t directly working on the project.
- The role of a steering committee is to make impartial, executive-level decisions on projects, including resolving issues, approving budgets, allocating resources, providing direction, and other tasks.
- A steering committee will work as long as the project it’s overseeing is underway, while a working group is created for a specific task within the project and will close once the task is complete.
