Lately, I’ve been hearing a word more often than I expected from clients—always said with a kind of grimace:
“It’s gotten a little…PMBOK-y.”
They usually don’t mean the actual PMBOK Guide®. At least, not the latest one—which, to its credit, emphasizes principles over prescription and encourages tailoring.
What they mean is that in their effort to follow good practice, they stopped thinking about what was good for them.
Which is understandable. Because while the standards emphasize tailoring tools and processes to your organization, guidance is scarce on how to do that. So many PMOs err on the side of “more is more.” More templates. More checkpoints. More layers of approval. Just to be safe.
Until one day, a PMO leader looks around and says what everyone’s thinking: Why does this feel harder than it needs to be?
That’s the moment I’ve been sitting with lately.
When did governance—meant to support momentum—start getting in its own way?
And more importantly: how do we fix it?
Why Good Governance Turns Heavy
When PMOs aren’t sure what’s essential, I’ve observed that they default to “just in case.” If it’s defined as a good practice (either by PM standards or their industry), it gets thrown in. Rarely does anyone go back to trim.
Fear plays a role, too. No one wants to be the person who missed a risk or failed to document something that becomes important later. So layers are added, like sediment piling on sediment, with the stuff that actually works buried under a mountain of paperwork.
What Governance is Actually For
Leaving aside heavily regulated industries, I think great governance should feel like a comfortable jacket. Something that fits well, moves with you, and protects you just enough to meet the demands of your day.
You don’t notice it every second, because it’s doing its job. Whether you’re snowboarding, hiking, or enjoying a patio on a brisk day, it enables action without constraining movement.
That’s what governance should do. It works best when it feels like a natural part of how work gets done.
Good governance shouldn’t feel like wearing a parka in summer.
How to Tell When Governance Is Working (or Not)
Some litmus tests I use with clients:
- Can project teams do most of what’s expected without rereading the policy?
- Are deliverables and processes helping people think? Or just helping them check a box?
- Are handoffs smooth, or do they produce rework?
- How fast are decisions getting made?
- When you read the deliverables, are they any good? Or are they so hard to fill out that the output is messy, inconsistent, and full of jargon?
- Are stakeholders actually reading what is produced? Does the PM ever go back and look at the artifacts they built?
When governance is working, it makes things clearer, faster, and easier. When it’s not, it becomes something people work around…or quietly resent.
Governance Isn’t Just a Framework. It’s a Capability.
Here’s another thing I’ve noticed. Even when the framework is just right, it still might not work. And usually, it’s because PMs aren’t sure how to execute it in a clear, helpful, and action-oriented way.
It’s not because they aren’t smart, talented, and capable people. It’s just that for too long, governance has been CYA. So “1-pagers,” filled with content, become five pages full of jargon.
There are lots of ways to improve the situation—audits, peer reviews, FAQs, and 1-page guides. But none of these seem to produce real learning, even if they improve artifacts here and there. Training helps. But what happens when you have a new employee who missed the session?
It’s a tough problem, without perfect answers. But recently, I tried something new…
Building an AI Governance Coach: An (Early) Case Study
Last month, I tried something for the first time—something I hadn’t done with a client before, but had a hunch it could be a game-changer.
I was working with a client who was revising their governance system and artifacts. The step was familiar. We started with zero-based governance. We pretended we were building everything from scratch.
To get added back in, every process, every template, every field, every required step had to earn its place. If we couldn’t answer…
- Why does this matter?
- What decision will this enable?
- What risk will this reduce?
…it didn’t stay. That got us to a cleaner system.
But we weren’t done.
Because processes and artifacts alone don’t build capability. And the client didn’t want to just give PMs a new set of steps and hope they understood what “good” looked like.
So we built an AI-powered coach to guide PMs through a reflective walkthrough of their artifacts.
The coach doesn’t grade their work. It nudges them toward clarity, completeness, and decision-readiness:
- What part of this would confuse a new stakeholder?
- What risks are relevant here?
- How will you know what success looks like?
- How do you plan to communicate this to others?
Then, PMs can share their learnings across their team. What was clarified? What surprised them? What did they change? What will they do differently (or the same) next time?
Governance is now a learning loop. Not a hoop to jump through.
We’re still kicking the tires on the final product, but early outputs are pretty dang cool! We’ve tested it against real projects and real draft artifacts, and so far, we’re excited about the learning it’s creating. Best of all, the Coach is tailored to their company, their industry, and their watch-outs. And it can be updated at any time.
Final Thought
PMOs and PMs are ready for something better than hoop-jumping governance. Unfortunately, tailoring governance that works isn’t easy. It requires tough, challenging conversations—and real intentionality in how it will be implemented.
As PMO leaders, practitioners, and consultants, we have a role to play in “Building a Better PMBOK,” ensuring that our Body of Knowledge is iterating and innovating to make governance work for us. Not the other way around.