Five disciplines. Every engagement.
Accountability is not a slogan. It is an operating practice, repeated weekly, documented, and enforced. The five disciplines below are how we move accountability from the homepage copy onto your programme plan.
Design the decision map.
Week one. We map every decision point on the programme: the ones in the plan and the ones hiding in gaps between workstreams. For each, we assign an owner, a deadline, and a decision authority. Ambiguous accountability is the single biggest cause of programme drift. We remove it at the start.
Run the SI against the SOW.
Weekly SI performance review against the contract. Not a status update. A documented assessment. Where the SOW says deliverable X by date Y, is it delivered? If not, why not, and at whose cost? Change orders triaged: is this new scope or is this work that should have been in the original? Documented. Dated. Signed.
Name the client-side drift.
The SI is not the only source of slippage. Business sign-off slips. Data cleansing falls behind. Testing resources get pulled for BAU. Training materials arrive late. We track internal commitments with the same discipline as SI commitments, and escalate internal drift to the sponsor the week it happens, not the month after.
Report unfiltered.
Every week. Every steering. Every board. One number for budget, one for timeline, one for business outcome. Honest RAG. The sponsor gets the same information the programme team works from. No parallel decks. No polite interpretation. If it is red, we say red.
Force decisions on time.
The difference between a decision delayed by two weeks and a decision delayed by two months is usually a million pounds in change orders. Every engagement has a decision register with dated deadlines. We name the decisions due this week. We name who owns them. We do not let them slide.
Week one. Month one.
Baseline the programme.
Read the SOW. Read the integrated plan. Read the RAID log. Review the last three steering decks and the last three SI status reports. Interview the sponsor, the SI engagement lead, the PMO lead, and the two most exposed workstream owners.
Output: a written baseline of where the programme actually is, where the SOW says it should be, and the top five accountability gaps, named, sized, and ranked by material risk.
Operating rhythm in place.
Weekly SI performance review, running. Decision register, populated with all outstanding decisions, owners, deadlines. Steering pack rebuilt to report honestly. Change control discipline in place. Client-side internal drift identified and escalation path agreed with sponsor.
By end of month one, every party on the programme knows what they are accountable for, who reports on it, and when.
What a week of oversight looks like.
This is the operating rhythm on every active engagement.
Deliverable review
SI deliverables reviewed before client acceptance. Issues logged before they become commitments.
Workstream standups
Three workstream standups. Progress against plan, blockers named, owners confirmed.
Steering preparation
Steering committee prep and facilitation. Decisions made, not deferred.
RAID review
Full RAID review with SI. Risks escalated, actions confirmed, accountability enforced.
Executive summary
Written summary to sponsor. Unfiltered. No sugar-coating. Delivered before end of business.
Where does your programme need accountability most?
A 30-minute Risk Review produces a written assessment of your top three accountability gaps within three working days.
Book a Risk Review→