Who should be on a steering committee? The short answer: the sponsor as chair, the business leaders who own the processes that will change, a finance lead, and a senior IT lead. Five to eight people. The programme director runs the meeting but is not a voting member. A steering committee is responsible for the decisions the programme cannot make on its own: scope, money, dates and which risks the business is willing to carry. And yes, a steering committee makes decisions. If yours does not, it has become a status meeting, and that is fixable.
I have sat on both sides of the table, as the programme lead presenting and as the client-side lead trying to get a decision out of a busy room. Here is what works.
What is a steering committee responsible for?
A steering committee owns the direction of the programme. The project team owns the delivery. That split matters, because when the committee starts managing tasks, nobody is left steering.
- Scope: approve or reject changes to what is being built.
- Money: release budget, approve contingency use and accept overruns.
- Dates: move milestones and approve go or no-go at each quality gate.
- Risk: decide which risks to accept, fund or escalate.
- People: unblock resources the programme cannot get on its own.
Write these down as decision rights in a one-page terms of reference. For each one, say what the programme director can approve alone and what must come to the committee. For example: changes under an agreed cost or time tolerance stay with the programme; anything above it goes to steering.
Who should be on a steering committee?
Pick people for their authority, not their interest. Every member should be able to say yes on behalf of their part of the business without checking with someone else.
- The sponsor (chair). Owns the business case and casts the deciding vote.
- Business process owners. The leaders of finance, supply chain, sales or HR whose teams will work differently after go-live.
- Finance. Someone who can release or reallocate money.
- IT or the CIO's delegate. Owns architecture, security and the run cost.
- The lead supplier's engagement director, if a systems integrator is involved. They attend, but the client decides.
- The programme director. Prepares the papers, presents the options and records decisions.
How many people should be on a steering committee? Keep the voting members to around five to eight. Every extra person adds another opinion and another diary to fit around. If someone needs to be informed but not decide, send them the minutes instead. For more on who should hold the sponsor and director roles, see who should lead an ERP implementation.
Does a steering committee make decisions?
It should. Many do not. Decision making is hard everywhere, not just on programmes. In McKinsey's 2019 survey of more than 1,200 managers, Decision making in the age of urgency, only 20 percent said their organisation excels at decision making. Sponsors matter too: PMI's Pulse of the Profession 2017 named actively engaged executive sponsors as the top driver of projects meeting their goals.
- 20%of managers say their organisation excels at decision making
- 61%say at least half their decision-making time is ineffective
- 62%of projects had actively engaged sponsors in PMI's 2017 survey
Source: McKinsey, Decision making in the age of urgency, 2019; PMI Pulse of the Profession, 2017
The difference between a committee that decides and one that only listens is usually in the design of the meeting, not the people in it.
Status-only steering committee
- Agenda is a tour of every workstream
- Slides arrive on the morning of the meeting
- Red items are explained, not resolved
- Ends with 'let's take that offline'
- Minutes record who spoke
Decision-making steering committee
- Agenda lists the decisions needed, in order
- Pre-read goes out three working days before
- Each decision has options and a recommendation
- Ends with a recorded yes, no or deferral with a date
- Minutes record decisions, owners and due dates
How to run a steering committee meeting that ends in decisions
A 60-minute steering committee
- Confirm last time's decisions (5 minutes)
Read back what was decided and whether the actions were done. This builds trust that decisions stick.
- Health in one page (10 minutes)
Plan, budget, top risks and gate status. No workstream tour. Questions only on what is red or amber.
- Decisions, one at a time (35 minutes)
For each one: the question, two or three options, the impact on time, cost and risk, and a recommendation. The chair asks for a decision before moving on.
- Escalations and asks (5 minutes)
Anything the programme needs from a named member, such as people, a policy call or a supplier conversation.
- Read back (5 minutes)
The programme director reads out every decision and action with an owner and a date. Then the meeting ends.
The pre-read: what to send and when
The pre-read is where decisions are really won. Members who arrive informed can decide in minutes. Members seeing a problem for the first time will ask for more analysis, and you lose another month. Send it three working days before the meeting and keep it short.
Steering committee pre-read
- Decisions needed, listed first, each with options and a recommendation
- One-page status: milestones, budget versus forecast, gate readiness
- Top five risks and issues, with what you need from the committee
- Change requests awaiting approval, with time, cost and risk impact
- Actions from the last meeting and whether they are done
- The date of the next quality gate and its criteria
Pull the risk section from a live RAID log rather than writing it fresh each month. If you do not keep one yet, start with what a RAID log is and how to run it.
How often should a steering committee meet? Monthly suits most of the programme. Move to every two weeks in the last three months before go-live, and add a short go or no-go session for cutover. Weak governance is one of the patterns behind why ERP implementations fail.
Running your steering committee in ProjectCAPEX
ProjectCAPEX gives the steering committee one place to work from. You can log a meeting with the type Steering committee and keep its agenda, attendees, minutes, actions and decisions together. Decisions go into a decisions log, so the read-back at the next meeting is already written. Change requests carry their budget and timeline impact and a named approver, who sees them in an approvals inbox. Quality gates, the RAID log and the budget sit in the same programme, so the pre-read draws on live records instead of copied slides.
To see a steering committee set up on a working programme, try the demo or start free.