Download · governance checklist
Is your portfolio governed, or just tracked?
Thirty checks across six areas, written for a PMO lead. Tick what is true today; what is left is the roadmap. Read it below, or take the PDF to the next steering meeting.
Portfolio structure
Before anything is tracked, agree what is being tracked.
- Every initiative is a project inside a named program; nothing lives only in someone's inbox.
- Each program has one accountable owner and a written scope, budget envelope and expected benefits.
- Projects carry start and end dates, a status, a health rating and a named manager.
- Status vocabulary is fixed and shared (for example Not Started → Planned → In Progress → On Hold → Completed).
- Archived work stays archived: it leaves the active view without being deleted.
Baselines and schedule control
A plan without a baseline cannot slip; it can only be rewritten.
- A baseline is set for every program at approval, and again only through change control.
- Milestones and go-lives are explicit rows, not implied by task end dates.
- Slippage is measured against the baseline and shown, not discussed from memory.
- Dependencies between tasks are recorded so a late predecessor is visible downstream.
- Computed health (overdue work, slipped milestones) is compared with reported health every cycle.
Change control
Approved means locked. Anything else is a draft.
- Every change request has a status that moves one way: proposed → under review → approved or rejected → implemented.
- Approvals are stamped with who approved and when; the record cannot be edited after approval without re-opening it.
- A change that affects the budget is added to the approved budget deliberately, never automatically.
- Reopening an approved change clears its approval and its budget line, and sends it back for decision.
- Rejected and deferred changes stay on the register as evidence of the decision.
Budget and benefits
The money and the promises are governed in the same place as the plan.
- An approved budget exists per financial year, itemised by category (Capex / Opex) and source (operating plan / change request).
- Planned and actual spend are phased by month so estimate-at-completion is a calculation, not an opinion.
- Variance against the approved envelope is reviewed at every steering meeting.
- Each program lists its benefits with a target, an owner and a measurement unit (money, count, percentage).
- Benefits are tracked monthly after go-live; realised value is reported against the business case.
RAID discipline
Risks, assumptions, issues and decisions are registers, not meeting notes.
- Every risk has probability, impact, an owner and a mitigation plan; exposure ranks the register.
- Assumptions have a verification date; an unverified assumption past its date becomes a risk.
- Issues carry priority, severity and a resolution plan; closed issues keep their history.
- Decisions record who decided, when, and the items they resolve.
- Program-level risks are allowed and visible alongside project risks in portfolio views.
Access, audit and reporting
Governance you cannot evidence did not happen.
- Access follows need: viewers read, contributors edit their own work, project and program managers approve within their scope.
- Every write to the plan, the registers and the budget leaves an audit entry with the actor and the time.
- The steering pack is generated from the live data, never rebuilt by hand in a slide deck.
- Exports of the whole portfolio are available at any time, in a format another tool can read.
- An access review (who can see and change what) is run at least quarterly.
Every check on this list is something Vedential enforces or makes visible — baselines, one-way change control, approved budgets by year, benefits tracking, RAID registers, scoped access and an audit log.
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