Many companies are trying to make some sort of change in their processes - make it faster, more consistent, more predictible, or more efficient. Why are they trying to do this? It is astonishing how many companies cannot answer this question. Instead, when you dig below the surface you discover that most change programs are motivated by two forces: imitation and obedience. Companies imitate what other companies that they admire are doing. They replicate behaviors of these role model companies with no real understanding whether this will change their own performance. At times this imitation will be useful, but it often will fail to produce the desired benefits. You may use the same golf club as a tournament pro, but it may not improve your game, particularly if your needs are different than his. The second key force motivating change is obedience. Managers read articles about 'good' management practices and adopt these practices simply because they have been labeled 'good,' without knowing how these practices might affect their economies. There is a different way to make these choices, a way that is embarrasingly simple, but surprisingly powerful: do more of the things that help you achieve your objectives. - Donald Reinersten, Managing the Design Factory

Implementing a governance system is a radical form of implementing change in an organization. Most change efforts within established organizations fail, for reasons identical to what causes so many projects to fail (see the article on Why Projects Fail for a detailed explanation of some of those reasons). Change efforts often have greater difficulty than traditional projects in being successful, because they are often not given the same level of focus and attention as projects (discipline, resources, etc), and because they must replace something to be successful (which turns out to be significantly harder in terms of user acceptance than creating a new thing which didn't exist before).

The steps to follow to be successful in implementing change are well defined and understood (see A proven pattern of successful change interventions), but are usually underestimated by people who have not undertaken change efforts before. Governance is a radical form of change because it usually to change a number of different things about an organization that are accepted practice, and are instilled in the group culture (valuing speed over quality, or experience over learning, for example). The first steps in establishing an effective governance system are to:

• build effective communications channels with your sponsors and primary customers
• decide what specific goals you expect to achieve with the system
• elaborate a set of responsibilities, commitments, and actions for creating and deploying the governance system across the organization
• build a set of metrics that allow tracking of progress with respect to goals.

Unfortunately, these steps are often skipped over in favor of the somewhat easier task of writing process material itself. This is analogous to software projects in which some individuals can't wait to write code, and skip over design in the process. Useful products can still come out the other end, and it can be important to begin the process of evolving a tangible (rather than abstract) work product into something useful; however, the risk remains that you may end up building the wrong thing. The more people there are working on something that has to fit ttogether cohesively, the more important this design process is. As a counter-point to that, though, iterative improvement through periodic blockpoint updates will be essential, as early versions of any new collection of assets will never be fully operational or adequately mature for all purposes.

To be successful, goal definition requires a well thought out survey of existing stakeholders to understand their needs. It is much easier to enlist their help in implementing governance if you are tackling problems that will be useful to them than it will be if you are just giving them more work to do. Elaborating and evangelizing a support network and communications channels is equally important to do, since they will be your information sensors to help collect information, adjust plans, and adopt to unforeseen events. Goals must then be decomposed into requirements for the improvement effort, so that activities and solutions can be evaluated in that context. Finally, metrics are essential to provide both a basis of accountability and a demonstration of progress for all to see.