About this Checklist
The purpose of this checklist is to ensure that project leadership, decision-making, and accountability structures are clearly established before major delivery begins. Establishing effective reporting and management structures ensures that the project has a clear decision-making hierarchy, defined accountability, and transparent communication lines. This prevents governance gaps, role confusion, and escalation delays that often lead to SAP project overruns.
Below is a full explanation of each checklist point — including what it means and why it matters.
Q1: Are the reporting and management structures in place i.e. Project and Program Management, Steering Committee, Integration Management?
This verifies that the formal governance bodies are defined — including the Project Management Office (PMO), Program Management layer (for multi-stream programs), Steering Committee (strategic decision-makers), and Integration Management (cross-workstream coordination).
Why it matters:
Without these structures, decisions are made inconsistently, escalations stall, and integration issues between streams (e.g., Finance vs. Logistics) go unresolved. Clear governance ensures that strategic, tactical, and operational levels of the project communicate effectively and maintain alignment with business goals.
Q2: Are all roles & responsibilities documented for the full Project Team and Steering Committee, showing who the sponsors, key stakeholders and the project management team are?
This ensures that an updated RACI matrix or similar documentation clearly defines who does what — covering project sponsors, program managers, team leads, key users, and functional/technical stream leads.
Why it matters:
Role ambiguity leads to duplicated efforts or missed tasks. Proper documentation makes accountability visible and supports smooth decision-making, escalation, and resource management.
Q3: If you have an external contract for services, do all external roles and responsibilities agree with the details described in the contract?
Checks alignment between the contractual scope and the operational governance setup (e.g., responsibilities of the System Integrator, subcontractors, or hosting providers).
Why it matters:
Discrepancies between what the contract defines and how teams actually operate often cause disputes, scope creep, and gaps in ownership. Governance needs to reflect the legal and delivery responsibilities agreed with vendors (i.e. what is written in their contracts must be written in the governance document)
Q4: Are the key stakeholders engaged in the project?
Evaluates if business owners, process leads, and end-user representatives are actively participating in governance forums and decision processes, not just nominally assigned and attending random meetings.
Why it matters:
Stakeholder engagement ensures that business priorities drive the project. Lack of engagement results in low adoption, misaligned deliverables, and poor organizational change management.
Q5: Assess the adequacy and effectiveness of the project management and governance processes and practices employed by the project role players i.e. Steering committee, Program management team, Team Leads
Are regular team meetings structured, are decisions recorded and follow up is tracked, are risks escalated and followed up, are dependencies tracked and managed? Are there any written procedures for that and training materials for team members?
Why it matters:
Many projects have governance “on paper” but lack discipline and follow-through. Evaluating effectiveness ensures governance is not ceremonial but genuinely drives delivery performance and compliance.
Q6: How have you been assured / got a confirmation that they understand their roles and responsibilities?
Confirms that team members — especially new or external ones — have been briefed, trained, or certified in their roles (e.g., how to act as a Workstream Lead, Test Manager, or Sponsor).
Why it matters:
Formal confirmation prevents the common failure mode where people think they understand their role but operate differently, creating decision bottlenecks or accountability gaps. Assurance often comes through onboarding sessions and sign-offs.
Q7: Is the IT Sponsor and Executive Sponsor in place? Do they understand their role? Have they been trained to play their roles?
Checks that the project has clearly assigned sponsors — usually one from IT and one from the business — who provide direction, funding, and decision authority, and that they’ve received sponsor training or briefings.
Why it matters:
Sponsors are the ultimate escalation point. Projects without engaged or informed sponsors lose alignment with strategic objectives, struggle to resolve conflicts, and risk slow or inconsistent decision-making. Sponsor training ensures they actively govern instead of passively observing.
