Project steering committee: the basics you need to master

The project steering committee is a key governance body in any business transformation initiative. It acts as the link between the executive committee and the operational teams responsible for execution and delivery. It describes a group of people whose role is to make decisions and ensure a goal is reached within a company.

In this article, we'll take a closer look at how it operates and the role it plays in overall project management.

What is a project steering committee?

A project steering committee is a cross-functional group of individuals — including the project manager — responsible for overseeing the smooth running of a project within a company. To strengthen the monitoring of a project in terms of oversight and the choices to be made, it is generally made up of a team that cuts across the project. A steering committee usually includes one member from each category of role.

The steering committee takes the concrete form of meetings held regularly throughout the project. These sessions serve as a governance checkpoint to review progress, assess performance indicators and make decisions based on data-driven insights.

This committee can draw on the analysis of metrics from the project's activities in order to make concrete decisions.

Why do we need a steering committee?

The project steering committee exists to keep the machinery of a project running smoothly. It is a decision-making body that lets the client and the vendor/partner (internal or external) move forward on the same path, aligned on goals and the tasks to be carried out.

Steering committees are especially important for complex projects involving multiple contributors or strong interdependencies across departments or organizations.

A project steering committee also helps reduce the risk of failure by overseeing progress and facilitating shared accountability among all stakeholders.

The main purpose of the steering committee is to make decisions about the project or projects underway. The steering committee is NOT an information-sharing body! In every company, the committee meeting should have as its goal to decide, to make choices on the "hot" or important topics that impact how the project (or projects) unfolds and is implemented.

What are the responsibilities of a project steering committee?

From setting goals to reviewing progress and making decisions, the steering committee has a central role throughout the project. Its purpose is to support and steer all strategic decisions related to the project.

Let's recap the steering committee's key responsibilities:

• Monitor project progress against the major milestones of the timeline and deadlines.
• Arbitrate on blocking topics that impact how the project unfolds.
• Allocate the resources needed for the project to progress: it escalates to the strategic committee (if one exists) the issues that are beyond its remit, along with major decisions.
• In smaller organizations, the steering committee may also handle the arbitration on strategic direction.
• Review the status of the expected deliverables.
• Track consumption of the budget defined initially and flag any risk of overspending.
• Monitor the risks, their likelihood of occurring, and anticipate solutions.

Who should sit on a steering committee?

The members of the steering committee are executives, managers and the business teams involved in the project. The project sponsor is an integral part of this group.

Steering committee or executive committee?

Depending on the size of the company, the make-up of the steering committee varies. Regardless of the structure, one principle must remain non-negotiable: the steering committee must have real decision-making authority. If its decisions can be overturned by another person or governing body, the committee loses its purpose.

In SMEs, the steering committee is made up of the leadership team, plus the project manager and sponsor brought in on a project-by-project basis.

In large companies, the difficulty lies in scale. With so many ongoing initiatives, the executive team cannot attend every steering committee. As a result, decision-making may become diluted, leading to political friction and unclear accountability.

Who's really in charge?

In project management, there is often a great deal of confusion between project execution and decision-making authority. This confusion can lead to delays, misalignment or even failure.

So be careful: as a project manager in cross-functional project management, you cannot arbitrate on your own or make decisions about which resources to prioritize or about deadlines that go beyond the scope of the mission. For decisions to be made, you must regularly present reporting and highlight key information to the steering committee.

The project manager paradox

Most of the time, projects fail because there is a misalignment between teams and stakeholders. Too often, project managers spend their time chasing overdue tasks instead of focusing on what truly drives progress: continuous alignment. Their main responsibility isn't micromanagement — it's leadership. Strong leadership, not control, is what keeps projects on course.

A team whose role is to decide

The steering committee team is like a navigation-assistance system that would ultimately make the decisions on the direction to take. The members of the steering committee are an essential relay of power within the company.

The project team is formed at the start of the project by the sponsor, in close collaboration with the project manager. It is imperative that the business experts likely to take part in decision-making are on the team.

Concretely, the steering committee members are to be drawn from the following typology of roles:

• Sponsor
• Project director (who may also be the sponsor)
• Project manager
• Business representative, as needed
• Group of "key users"

Common mistakes to avoid

1 / Confusing the steering committee with the project committee

A project committee (Copro or Coproj) is a meeting organized by the project managers. They are aware of every facet of the project and its stakes. It is a checkpoint meant to surface arbitration points to submit to the steering committee if needed.

The project committee is therefore a meeting, most often weekly, that brings together a client-side project manager and a vendor-side project manager when the project calls on outside help. The operational people involved can thus coordinate the project and make sure it is moving in the right direction. It is the opportunity to raise any issues or delays, but also and above all to find a solution for organizing what comes next.

The project committee is sometimes confused with the first steering committee: a first steering committee, also called the "kick-off meeting", generally takes place before the project starts. After that, it can occur at the project's key stages (end of the scoping phase, before go-live…) to approve the decisions made.

Project committee: Micro = allocation of tasks

Steering committee: Macro = arbitration and decisions

2/ Not knowing exactly what happens in a leadership team

The leadership team brings together people who have decision-making authority across the business.

The members of the leadership team meet periodically to review strategic initiatives and evaluate progress across departments. It supports the CEO or managing director by shaping the company's long-term direction and providing guidance on critical matters.

The leadership team talks about the project during the project steering committees but also gets together as a collective decision-making body, giving recommendations and approving strategic choices in the best interest of the company. While it may be involved in project steering committees, its scope goes far beyond: finance, corporate strategy, M&A, human resources and more.

How to prepare a project steering committee meeting

The project manager defines the topics to cover and it is up to them to integrate the work of the relevant stakeholders or of the working groups set up to resolve a specific problem. No information should be discovered during the steering committee. The agenda of the meeting must first be clearly defined, then must include the essential topics, before being sent to participants 48 hours before the meeting.

Everything happens upstream

Everything must be sent upstream, at least one week in advance, to the people attending the meetings. Documents useful for understanding the project can also be sent by the project manager.

The sponsor must be aware of everything, and above all of the critical topics that will be included in the presentation. Ideally, certain decisions will be made before the meeting between the project manager and the sponsor. The goal would be to have the approvals of the various managers on these topics.

A bit of politics

The project manager must work upstream, with the committee participants likely to oppose certain decisions, to try to defuse the situation and understand exactly what is going on. The project manager is therefore a negotiator, or at least must become one. The progress of the project depends on their political tact. They must ease tensions and put the project back on the rails more often than their fair share. The name of the game is to avoid, as much as possible, open conflicts between stakeholders. The business teams would then risk disengaging from the steering committees, and none of the other project bodies would be able to unblock the situation.

Running the meetings

The purpose of the meetings is to get a progress update on the project. The main value of the meetings is to maintain ongoing exchanges between the different technical and functional teams. The project manager or project director runs the steering committee. They present the project's progress using dashboards and precise, concise reporting. The sensitive topics must absolutely be addressed. The sponsor gives their approval to the decisions that are made.

The meetings most often take place once a month. Sometimes a quarterly rhythm is chosen. Each session should be focused and on-time, lasting no more than 90 to 120 minutes.

Documents used

The two documents mainly used are the agenda and the meeting minutes.

The agenda: analysis of the timeline, risks, actions in progress, recent decisions and topics requiring arbitration. It must be shared in advance so participants can prepare accordingly.

The meeting minutes: a written summary is a must, to be sent within 24 hours by the project manager. It includes all decisions made during the meeting and serves as an official record, later appended to the overall project documentation.

Steering committee success: the "top tips" to keep from messing it up

1 - Steering committee - leadership team - what matters is deciding!

In some organizations the leadership team encompasses the steering committee. It doesn't matter. If you are a project manager, make sure decisions are made for your projects.

2 - Marathon vs. Sprint

The steering committee is not a meeting. It is a series of meetings. The steering committee unfolds over time, with a frequency to be respected. Ideally it takes place at least once a month; otherwise you lose the thread and don't force the right decisions to be made. The project gets bogged down and it's failure. When you plan your first steering committee, send invitations to everyone concerned for the next six months.

3 - Require the presence of everyone concerned

All the decision-makers must absolutely be present at each steering committee. Our advice: manage members' participation ahead of the meetings. An announced or observed absence often means the person disagrees with the project or doesn't feel considered enough within it. In any case, an absence can harm the project's productivity or even the mood of the meeting.

4 - A single format

Once a format has been adopted by all stakeholders and has proven its effectiveness, don't change it. Consistency lets you focus on substance and forget form. It is better to spend time formatting your presentation ahead of the first steering committee — choosing the right indicators and color codes — and then to lock in that template, which will serve as the basis for every steering committee. This way you'll be more effective at handling the important and/or urgent topics.

5 - Time Keeper

For some, time is money; for others it's just a matter of respect and discipline. A steering committee that drags on for three hours will quickly lose engagement.

If we say 10 minutes per important "topic", then it's 10 minutes. The time-keeper has the right, and the duty, to end a discussion so that the meeting "moves forward". They are the guardian of a certain discipline that will surely be appreciated over time by most of the members.

6 - Manage frustrations

A steering committee is not a place to settle scores in public. If something's wrong, raise it with the person concerned well in advance. Or if they are clearly involved in a significant blocker on the project, let them know you intend to share this information during the meeting. The element of surprise is not the effect you're after during a steering committee.

7 - Continuous reporting

The best way not to catch the steering committee's participants off guard is to communicate continuously about the project's progress. Send updated information and reporting (many tools are available); this makes the people concerned react as they feel involved. That way, by creating small tremors through weekly reporting, you'll be able to anticipate a backlash or a revolt that's starting to brew!

8 - The surprise guest = the false good idea

This is precisely the worst thing you can do: inviting a "surprise guest" on an ad-hoc basis to the steering committee. They may not know how the meeting works and will probably ask questions whose answers were already addressed several days or even several weeks ago. An occasional guest is like a hair in the soup — a disruptive element whose added value is quite relative. If it's an expert, then why not ask them to write a recommendation note on a specific topic and send it to the people concerned ahead of the meeting?

As a reminder, the steering committee is not an arena in which everyone debates. It is a decision-making forum. Occasional guests do not have voting rights.

9 - (again) a bit of politics

If the presence of a business expert is necessary or desirable, then don't hesitate for a second and invite them to the meeting! It would be clumsy to ask a third party to speak on behalf of the business — you'd risk quickly losing credibility. Business experts should be valued whenever possible and involved in the decisions made. In doing so, you help create a healthy climate and, as project manager, you earn the respect you're due.

10 - If the decision isn't made

If, within the allotted time, the decision isn't made — or worse, if a half-decision is taken — it's important to mention it clearly:

Since what isn't written down doesn't exist: putting this sentence in the meeting minutes will, at review time, hold everyone accountable to their responsibilities.

11 - Lunch break

While the "time-keeper" has the right to end certain discussions, some conversations are worth continuing informally, especially when they improve alignment. A practical tip is to schedule your steering committees from 10:00 to 12:00. Not only does hunger help ensure the meeting ends on time, but the informal conversations that can follow over lunch often unlock conflicts and reinforce collaboration. As always, drink responsibly.

Sponsor, milestones, project manager, key user, reporting, steering committee: definition(s) and misunderstanding(s)

To put it simply, the question is the scalability of agility…

Even though every discipline has its codes… in tech, the jargon runs deep!

If you really want to include your projects' stakeholders in a clear environment and facilitate the development of a common culture of transformation… without having to train your teams for days… try AirSaas!

Because yes, in companies everyone talks about projects… but very few people talk about the same thing.

Take milestones, for example… The common mistake is to give too many of them, making effective tracking illegible.

A fundamental reminder: in steering and reporting, I share the status of milestones, not the status of tasks.

By revisiting what's really at play behind the key words and expressions regularly used in projects, you bring clarity back into the process.

Because let's remember, a REX isn't just a dog's name! :-). Steering committee: definition(s) and misunderstanding(s)

It all comes down to preparation! What to do before the committee

A steering committee should not be your umpteenth weekly or monthly meeting. Nor a collaborative workshop. It's not the place to resolve operational or functional issues.

All of this has already been dealt with upstream in a smaller group. And the project manager, as well as the sponsor, must have a very clear idea of what they expect from each project steering committee session.

Thanks to a whole body of preparation work, the project manager can in particular anticipate objections, clarify expectations and co-develop the right course of action with the sponsor.

Defining goals, interactions with the sponsor, the place of stakeholder interests, handling disagreements in advance, aligning on priorities, or even using anonymous forms to bring out friction points — everything counts when preparing a high-impact committee session.

In this article How to prepare a steering committee well? the emphasis is on people and human relationships. They are so often the source of project failures that they are major attention points in project management.

The steering committee is starting? Here's what to do to run it effectively!

The committee was prepared with as much anticipation as possible… It's the big day. And yet the unexpected happens: a stakeholder is missing, the presentation isn't as nice as planned… and you don't feel entirely in control.

Yes, and under stress our behaviors change!

What are the pitfalls to avoid, how do you manage time and tensions well, what is the optimal presentation deck… How do you handle things going off the rails, the political stakes, the right level of detail to communicate? All these questions are legitimate. By going through our checklist you'll spare yourself needless over-tensions.

If the meeting and the project manager are well prepared, running a successful steering committee is an achievable goal! Read this article to learn How to run a steering committee?

The steering committee is stuck? How to improve the decision-making process?

As we saw above, this committee is a team whose role is to decide!

In a company, decisions are the central element that blocks or moves things forward.

BUT

No one, no company, steers by decision.

• No clear way to make a decision other than in a meeting — no history.
• No transparency about the decisions,
• No way for a project manager to easily escalate a decision to be made.

The clearer, more transparent and more easily "usable" the decision-making process is, the more agile and responsive your organization becomes.

Decision-making should be as simple as an API.

Without effective decision-making, projects are launched, stopped or extended in an irrational way. We all have in mind a person who monopolizes the floor for 10 minutes. Someone who asks for a specific detail that keeps us from talking about the substance… Discover tips to better handle these situations, and finally learn How to decide in a steering committee?

How to set up an effective steering committee?

As we saw above, the steering committee is designed to keep the project running smoothly. But what about the steering committee itself — how do you keep that engine running?

What are the key points of vigilance regarding members' involvement, how do you defuse tensions, avoid too much political maneuvering, maintain effectiveness over time, what are the most useful tools… If you're wondering How to set up a steering committee? read our reference article on this page.

How to handle aggressiveness in steering committees?

How do you spot and manage difficult personalities in your companies and steering committee meetings? It is one of the most critical challenges in any assembly — the one that determines working conditions. There are two types of aggressive behavior… A bit like first aid, our collective responsibility is above all to be able to spot the types of "aggression": the ones you have to sanction and the ones you have to remediate!

In the second category we find the more classic profile of the aggressive, rude, disrespectful person operating on the edge of a red card. Example: they raise their voice, shout, stand up, throw out a cutting remark to personally attack certain members, or even all of them! They go after people versus what they do.

Be careful about acknowledgment… Ignoring = worsening.

Likewise, here a reframing and a remediation on the rules are called for. In cases of disrespect or verbal aggression, pointedly recall the discussion rules agreed for steering committees. Ask participants to stick to them and to avoid aggressive behavior.

How to handle aggressiveness in steering committees? How do you react in case of aggressiveness? Discover the 7 tips selected to make your office life easier.

Steering committee: 5 tips to make everything go smoothly

Congratulations! The update went well! You've read a comprehensive dossier and now know the fundamentals of the steering committee.

Beyond the fundamentals, we've prepared for you, on another page, 5 premium tips to go further. Pragmatic and actionable practices: discover, for example, the IT/Business/Sponsor relational contract. You'll also be won over by a "gem" of pure rhetoric with the vague & precise answers method, to use if you're caught off guard, etc. Here is our — inevitably subjective — selection of 5 practices we wish we'd discovered before our first committee :-) Project steering committee: 5 tips to make everything go smoothly.