Performance Improvement Strategy and Governance
Performance Improvement Strategy and Governance tests whether you can connect improvement work to enterprise strategy and run it as a governed portfolio rather than a set of disconnected projects. Expect questions on strategic alignment, charters, prioritization, decision rights, benefit realization, and maturity.
Core rules and concepts
- Translate strategy into themes, value streams, initiatives, owners, measures, and expected benefits. An initiative without a strategic link is a candidate for deferral.
- Separate governance from delivery: a steering group sets priorities, funds stage gates, resolves escalations, and retires failing work; delivery teams execute.
- Use explicit prioritization criteria, such as strategic fit, financial and non-financial benefit, risk, effort, and compliance obligation. Document weights and test sensitivity.
- Define benefits with a baseline, target, measurement method, owner, and post-implementation review. Distinguish outputs (a system delivered) from outcomes (cycle time reduced).
- Governance must include stop/continue decisions, not only approvals. A portfolio that never stops work is not governed.
Worked example
Three initiatives compete. Mandatory compliance work C has a penalty exposure of $900,000 and must be funded first. A and B are discretionary. Using 1–5 scores and weights of benefit 40%, strategic fit 30%, risk 20%, compliance 10%: A = 0.4(3) + 0.3(5) + 0.2(4) + 0.1(2) = 3.7; B = 0.4(5) + 0.3(3) + 0.2(2) + 0.1(2) = 3.5. A ranks higher, but the margin is narrow. The reasoning is to fund C separately, rank A and B on the weighted score, then check portfolio balance and sensitivity: if risk weight rises to 30%, B may overtake A. Governance records the decision and the trigger for review.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating a strategy map as a poster with no owners or funding links.
- Scoring initiatives without published weights, evidence, or sensitivity checks; this invites pet-project selection.
- Double-counting benefits across initiatives or claiming benefits with no baseline.
- Confusing governance approval with benefit realization; no one tracks the outcome after go-live.
- Keeping every project alive because sunk cost feels safer than stopping.