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The Steering Committee should be big enough to represent all of the stakeholders concerned with the project. The Committee should be small enough to make decisions. What are the types of representation on the steering committee?

My project is a special type of IT project – An Application Selection and implementation. As such, there are some natural constituencies who should be represented. And because a procurement decision is being made, the Steering Committee makeup should map to the Buying influences as identified in last week’s strategic selling model.

Let’s enumerate some of these:

- The IT Organization: Any new application coming into the organization can impact IT in a host of ways: network traffic, server needs and footprint, support issues, compatibility issues. Clearly, the IT Organization is a Technical Buying influence, has the ability to say “No”, and must be represented.

- The User organizations: In my project, these are the individual publication areas that provide both the searchable content and the user-base who will use the application. They have concerns that range from usability through individual implementation concerns to content tagging effort. These organizations are the source of the benefits of the project. Their commitment to the implementation is a key factor in the success of the project.

- The Project Sponsor: Most projects are chartered by a senior executive – the executive who agrees that there is a substantial problem and opportunity – and who approves the formation of the group and the effort. He or She may also be the economic buyer. In any case, they should be a member of the steering committee. In practice, they may not often attend (they are going to meetings chartered by their bosses), but membership keeps them on the distribution list, and you can bring them in for pivotal issues or discussions.

- Other technical influencers: these can include Logistics, Finance, HR, or almost any other part of the organization. In fact, one of the challenges of implementing Enterprise-class software is mustering the cross-organizational quorum needed to make a decision.

Don’t neglect the makeup of your steering committee – It is one of the first topics to discuss with your project sponsor. And be sure to include on the committee the opinion leaders in the organization - there are several in every organization, at each level. As an outsider, you will need help identifying them, but that shouldn’t be a problem