Steering Committee: What It Does and How to Run One That Actually Steers

A steering committee is a small group of senior people who give a project its direction and take the decisions its project manager is not allowed to make alone: what is in scope, how much it may spend, how far it may drift from plan, and whether it carries on. A typical one has a chair (often the sponsor), members speaking for the users and the suppliers, someone from finance, and sometimes a member responsible for assurance.

Wikipedia’s summary describes a committee that gives a project guidance, direction and control inside an organization.¹ In project management terms it holds the authority the project manager lacks, and a committee that spends its meetings hearing updates leaves that authority unused. Once you have agreed which decisions belong to the committee, four steps keep its meetings on them:

1. Write a one-page terms of reference.
2. Send a one-page pre-read.
3. Run a 60-minute meeting built around decisions.
4. Meet when decisions are due.

What is a steering committee?

A steering committee directs a project from above without running it day to day. Alfonso Bucero and Randall Englund, in a 2007 paper for PMI’s Global Congress in Budapest, put the purpose in one line: to direct the project, not to manage it. They compare the committee’s relationship with its project to the one between a board of directors and a company.²

That split is what makes the committee worth its members’ time. The project manager runs the work: the plan, the team, the suppliers and the daily problems. The committee holds what only senior people can give: money, priority over other work, and the authority to change what the project is for. The PRINCE2 method’s 2017 glossary describes the project manager as running the project day to day within constraints agreed with the board above them.³

A team replacing an organization’s finance system shows the line. The project manager can move a training session or swap one tester for another. Delaying go-live by a month, paying the supplier more or dropping the reporting module are committee decisions, because each one changes what the organization gets or pays. If an agenda item could be settled by the project manager alone, take it off the committee’s agenda.

Who should be on a project steering committee?

A project steering committee needs one seat for each group that pays for the project, uses its result, builds it or will look after it later, plus a chair with the final say. Jaap Stoppels and colleagues at TU Delft in the Netherlands, writing in the Project Management Journal, define five member roles from interviews with committee members and project managers: representing the funders, the users, the suppliers and the organization that will support the deliverables, plus quality assurance.⁴

The same team’s follow-up survey found that members acting on clear individual responsibilities were linked to project success, and that the four representation roles were generally covered.⁵ We could read both papers only in abstract, and a one-off survey like this cannot show that clear roles cause better results.

PRINCE2 fixes three roles on its version of the committee. The executive chairs it, represents the customer and owns the business case; the senior user makes sure user needs are specified correctly and met; the senior supplier speaks for the people building the result and provides their resources. Each member also carries an assurance duty for their own area: business, user or supplier assurance.³

Real committees add seats for the organization’s own controls. The University of Manchester’s estates rules for UK capital projects include a chair from estates, a nominee of the Registrar who normally comes from finance, the sponsor, the project manager, a user co-ordinator, and lay and student members.⁶ The University of Limerick in Ireland has its Provost chair a workload-model project’s committee and invites a trade union representative.⁷

Each seat exists so that a decision taken in the room holds afterwards. If nobody present can commit the users’ time or the supplier’s staff, the committee can agree a change and still watch it stall. A retailer rolling out new till software, for example, needs someone who speaks for store managers, or a go-live date agreed at the table may land in the busiest trading week.

Write each member’s role next to their name in the terms of reference. Someone who cannot say which group they speak for is an observer, and we suggest observers attend without a vote, or read the minutes instead.

Steering committee, project board or board committee?

A project board is PRINCE2’s name for a project steering committee with three set roles, while a board committee is a subgroup of a company’s board of directors with an oversight job that outlasts any single project. The first two do the same work under different names. The third serves the company’s board, which is a different kind of authority.

In PRINCE2, the project board directs the project manager and, at the end of each stage, decides whether to authorize the next one or close the project.⁸ The French edition of the official glossary translates project board as “comité de pilotage de projet”, literally a project steering committee.³

Board committees sit at company level. The G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance (2023) describe committees such as audit, remuneration, nomination and risk as support for the full board, with monitoring and advisory roles; the board as a whole stays responsible for the decisions taken.⁹

The practical difference is where a decision goes when the project cannot settle it. A steering committee answers for one project; a decision above its mandate goes up through the organization’s own approval route, which in a company may end at the board. Check your organization’s delegation rules before the first meeting so the committee knows its own ceiling.

The decisions only a steering committee can make

Four kinds of decision belong to the steering committee: changes to scope, changes to budget, the tolerances the project manager works within, and whether the project continues. PRINCE2 builds its board around them, and its glossary gives the working parts.³

A tolerance is how far time and cost may move above or below the plan’s target before the deviation has to go up a level; the 2017 glossary allows tolerances for quality, scope, benefits and risk too, and the 2023 seventh edition adds sustainability.⁸ When the project manager forecasts a breach, that is an exception. The project manager writes an exception report with options and a recommendation, and the board approves or rejects an exception plan. At the end of each management stage the board reviews progress, the business case, risks and the next stage plan to decide whether to continue, and a project it stops early should salvage what value it has created.³

1. Tolerance: how far time and cost may move from the plan before anyone must escalate; the committee sets it
2. Inside the band: the project manager deals with the wobble and reports it, without asking for a decision
3. Exception: once the forecast is expected to break the band, the project manager raises it with the committee
4. Committee decision: approve a new plan, change the scope or budget, or stop the project

PRINCE2 calls this way of working management by exception: each level manages inside the limits it was given and escalates only when they are forecast to break.⁸ It spares the committee from approving every wobble and gives the project manager room to act.

The committee does not need every line of the project’s RAID log, only the few entries that could break a tolerance or need its authority. Manchester’s terms of reference ask its project committees to review the risk register regularly and advise the project manager when a different approach is needed.⁶

Put the tolerances in the terms of reference in plain units, such as two weeks either way on go-live and a set sum on cost. A written limit gives the project manager a line to work to and tells everyone in advance which surprises come to the committee.

How to run a steering committee meeting

The four steps below come from published terms of reference and practitioner guidance; no trial has compared them with other ways of running a committee, so scale them to your project.

1. Write a one-page terms of reference

A terms of reference is the committee’s job description, agreed before its first meeting. The University of Limerick’s version sets a quorum of half the members plus one, decides questions by majority with a casting vote for the chair, and asks members to declare any conflict of interest at the start of each meeting.⁷ A page is enough for most projects if it covers:

• the committee’s purpose and the mandate it works within
• each member and the group they represent
• the decisions reserved for the committee and the tolerances it delegates
• quorum, how decisions are made, and how conflicts of interest are handled
• how often it meets and when papers go out
• who it reports to, and the event that ends it

Manchester’s project committees exist until the project’s final account is settled, which gives each one a natural end.⁶

2. Send a one-page pre-read

A one-page pre-read lets members arrive knowing the facts, so the meeting can go on choices. Flinders University in Australia asks for agendas and required reading to go out at least 24 hours before each steering committee meeting.¹⁰ In his 2007 account, Bucero found his detailed project report too long, cut the status report to three slides, and found the meetings more effective.² That is one practitioner’s experience, but it matches the committee’s job.

The page answers four questions: what decisions we need today, with options and a recommendation; where the forecast stands against each tolerance; which risks need the committee’s help; and what has changed since the last meeting. Preparing it is part of what a project manager does each week.

3. Run a 60-minute meeting built around decisions

A steering committee agenda includes four things: a check on last meeting’s decisions, the forecast against tolerances, the decisions on today’s page, and a read-back of who does what. The timings below are our suggestion for a 60-minute meeting, to adjust as needed.

1. 0 minDecisions and actions from last time: done or not
2. 5 minForecast against tolerances, exceptions only
3. 15 minDecisions: options, recommendation, choice, owner
4. 45 minRisks and issues that need the committee
5. 55 minRead back each decision, its owner and its date

Putting the decisions in the first half hour protects them from a long update. Record each one in the minutes with its owner and date, so the next meeting can open by checking it.

4. Meet when decisions are due

There is no standard answer to how often a steering committee should meet. Flinders’ committee meets fortnightly or as needed,¹⁰ Limerick’s at least four times a year,⁷ and Manchester’s as often as needed, with the rhythm changing during the project.⁶ PRINCE2 ties board decisions to stage ends and exceptions, with time-driven highlight reports from the project manager in between.³

Set the calendar by the decisions: a meeting before each stage gate, contract signature or go-live, and an agreed route (an email or a short call) for exceptions that cannot wait.

Before the first steering committee meeting

• Name each member and the group they represent
• List the decisions reserved for the committee
• Write the tolerances in days and money
• Agree quorum, voting and conflicts of interest
• Set a deadline for the one-page pre-read
• Book meetings before each major decision point
• Write down the event that ends the committee

Why steering committees turn into status meetings

Steering committees drift into status meetings when nobody brings them a decision, and when members would rather not hear bad news. The research on steering committees is thin, but one survey suggests the second problem is easy to underrate.

The study

Limited evidence

Open to bad news? Ranked last of ten committee functions in a South African survey (2023)

Shajal Drake and Michiel Bekker of the University of Pretoria surveyed 46 practitioners on large capital projects across South African industries. Asked to rank ten steering committee functions, respondents put custodian of project governance first and being open to hearing bad news last. The study found no clear link between project success and either the committee’s involvement in project phases or clearly defined member roles.¹¹

The authors point to a failed industrial project where fear of raising risks was a likely factor, so a low rank for openness is a warning rather than a verdict.¹¹ Bucero describes the quieter version: committee members who sat listening and seemed supportive, then struggled to reach decisions.²

Myth

A steering committee meeting is where the project reports its status.

Fact

Status can travel on paper. The meeting exists for the decisions the project manager cannot take alone.

The evidence-at-a-glance table shows how little has been measured. Every claim about steering committees comes from surveys, interviews or case studies, and none tests a meeting format.

Minutes are the simplest test. If two meetings in a row record no decisions, the committee is receiving reports, and it may be better to send those in writing and meet only when a decision is due.

The bottom line

A steering committee earns its time by deciding what the project manager cannot: scope, money, tolerances and whether to carry on. Write those decisions and the tolerances on one page, send a one-page pre-read before each meeting, and spend the first half hour on the choices it asks for.