Business support is a key element to the operation of integrated governance. In many organisations elements of overall business support already exist – such as project and/or programme support, a PMO and assurance function.
Business support is important to the integration of governance components and the mapping of responsibilities and accountabilities. It is recommended that distributed, parochial business support functions are collated to deliver the same vision and overall coherent service. This can be from one team, or a distributed hub and spoke service under one senior leadership position. It is recommended that the data integration required for governance is co-ordinated by business support for ease of configuration, operation, assurance and advancement.
While it is desirable to harmonise support services to enable integrated governance, the extent to which assurance services are included in the Business Support team is less clear. It depends upon the necessity to keep assurance separate, and the constitution of existing assurance specialisms in (for example) information, risk, benefit, and finance teams already within the business.
The Business Support function must be considered a ‘Management Team’. It has objectives and targets, and it may co-ordinate deployment of people across competing priorities for services and secondments to projects and programmes. It has an internal governance agenda which includes resources and benefits. However, whereas for other Management Teams, the quality management and service details are not within the scope of BIG, the Business Support services provided to the organisation are central to BIG.
The Business Support agenda is a vital component enabling the other agendas to function smoothly, satisfy governance and management needs and assuring the service Business Support professionals provide.
The agenda facilitates new entities, changes in support needs and interventions. It co-ordinates assurance reviews, case reviews that progress issues and risks related to the governance operation.
The Business Support agenda results in decisions about remedial actions for data and process quality issues, assignment of assurance resources, decision gate inputs to portfolio, programmes, projects and workstreams and escalations.
| Inputs | Agenda | Outputs |
|---|---|---|
MI that covers regular performance, forecasts and ad hoc inputs. Data and process compliance escalations. Business support and assurance resource requirements and service requests. Priorities for BAU and Change (Objectives, Targets and Challenges). Performance reports. Actions and decisions progress. | Review:
| Actions, decisions and risks assigned to owners including priorities for resource allocations. Escalations to management teams, portfolios, programmes, projects and workstreams from assurance reviews. Communications to Main Board, portfolio, programme, management teams, commercial and finance departments, sponsors, projects and workstreams. |
Business Support oversight, via a mapped, integrated data solution, clarity on accountabilities and orchestration of the governance framework, makes it possible to sustain the information flows, actions and decisions.
Thank you to the Core P3M Data Club for providing this page.
