What belongs in an ERP steering committee?

An ERP steering committee needs five to seven people with decision authority, a fixed rhythm of four to six weeks, and an agenda made of decisions rather than reports. Specifically: open decisions with a paper, deviations in schedule, budget and scope, the top risks with owners, and approval of the next stage. Everything else belongs in the project report, not in the meeting.

When you need to escalate there: When to escalate and to whom?

Who actually steers the project: Who steers your project when it gets hard?

Who sits on the committee

Five to seven people is the workable size. That includes a member of the management board as chair, the owners of the two or three most affected areas, the head of IT, the internal project manager and the leadership level of the implementation partner. Anyone using external steering has them at the table too.

What matters is not the function but the authority. Every person at the table must be able to decide for their area without consulting back. A body in which half the participants have to check first produces adjournments instead of decisions.

The partner project manager reports but is not among those deciding for your side. That separation matters so the body remains a place of steering rather than becoming an extended project meeting.

What belongs on the agenda

Four items, always in the same order. First the open decisions, each with a short paper, options and a recommendation. That is the actual purpose of the meeting, which is why it comes at the beginning and not at the end when time runs short.

Second the deviations in schedule, budget and scope against the last position. Not the overall status but the change, because only that is new. Third the three to five largest risks, each with a name and a measure.

Fourth the approval of the next stage when a phase transition is due. An explicit approval forces the question of whether the preconditions are genuinely met. Without it, projects slide into the next phase while the previous one is still open.

What does not belong in it

Detailed subject discussions do not belong in the committee. If two areas argue about the design of a process, that is to be settled in the specialist group, and only the decision, should it not be taken there, comes to the meeting.

Extensive status reports do not belong in it either. They are sent out beforehand and count as read. A meeting spending forty minutes on presentation has no time left for the actual work.

And the traffic light colour by gut feeling does not belong in it. Status colours need a rule: green means all commitments from the last period were met. Amber means there is a deviation with a measure. Red means a decision by this body is needed. Without such rules, green is a mood reading.

Rhythm and minutes

A rhythm of four to six weeks has proven itself, tighter in critical phases. What matters is that the dates are set for the whole year and also take place when nothing is burning. A body that only convenes in a crisis is not a steering organ but a fire brigade.

The minutes are short and consist at their core of a table: decision, date, who decided, what follows from it and by when. Records of discussion do not belong in them. Later these minutes are the most important source when it has to be reconstructed why something was built the way it was.

One practical note: do not schedule the meeting for the last day before a milestone. The body should be able to decide before facts are created, not to confirm them.