Skip to content

Watch: ADAPT Matrix - a smarter way to tailor project governance

                                                            Amines focus session

Most project failures are not caused by insufficient effort or technical incompetence. They are caused by a governance structure that does not match the reality of the work: too much process where speed is needed, not enough structure where risk is high, and a model that was designed once at project kick-off and never revisited as the context changed. The result is teams that either spend more time reporting than delivering or operate without enough visibility and control to catch problems before they become expensive.

This session, led by Amine, an independent project manager with deep experience across complex delivery environments in banking and construction, introduces the ADAPT framework. It is a practical, reusable tool for building governance that fits your actual project context, designed to be reviewed periodically throughout the delivery lifecycle rather than fixed at the start. The session works through the full framework and then applies it to two real-world projects: a digital onboarding platform for a bank and a multi-site warehouse construction programme, showing how the same tool produces two completely different governance models.

Watch the full recording here:


What you'll take away from the session:

  • Why the goal of project governance is just enough structure rather than maximum control, how to recognise when you have the balance wrong in either direction, and the specific conditions under which light, standard and enhanced governance each apply

  • The ADAPT framework in full: Assess the context (stable, turbulent or mixed), decide on the delivery approach, align your stakeholders, set the governance level and tailor your practices, including the guiding questions and expected outputs for each step

  • How ADAPT was applied in practice to a bank's digital onboarding platform, a six-to-seven-month, high-regulation project where the framework balanced speed with compliance by calibrating governance separately for UX, project management and regulatory reporting rather than applying a single model across the board

  • How the same framework produced an entirely different governance model for a logistics company constructing 40 warehouses across multiple sites, where operational predictability, contractor management and safety compliance required structured controls that would have been unnecessarily heavy in a software delivery context

  • How to handle stakeholder alignment in practice across complex environments: mapping power and influence, building communication strategies per stakeholder group and maintaining alignment as project scope, risk and personnel evolve over time

  • How to assess and adapt to company culture when entering a new project environment, why understanding the organisation's maturity level is as important as the technical governance decisions, and how to propose a model and adjust based on what the culture actually accepts

The framework is designed to be reusable across project types, industries and team compositions, and works equally well for independent professionals and internal delivery leads.  

What is the ADAPT framework and when should you use it?

 ADAPT is a governance design tool for project professionals. The acronym covers: Assess the context, Decide on the delivery approach, Align stakeholders, set the governance level (light, standard or enhanced) and Tailor your practices. It is designed for use at the start of every project and reviewed periodically throughout delivery. It is most useful when entering environments where the right governance model is unclear or where a prior model has clearly stopped working. 

What does stakeholder alignment actually look like in practice?

 It starts with a map: who holds power, who holds influence and what each party needs from the project. From there, you build a communication strategy tailored to each group rather than sending the same update to everyone. Alignment is not a one-time agreement at project start. It requires regular check-ins, particularly as scope evolves, priorities shift or project risk changes. The governance structure exists partly to create moments where misalignment can be surfaced early. 

How do you adapt your governance approach when entering a new company culture?

Before the project starts, gather context: speak to people who have worked there, understand the organisation's history with change and assess team maturity. Then start light and adjust. Amine's approach is to propose a model and observe what the culture accepts or resists. Imposing a framework that conflicts with how the organisation actually makes decisions creates resistance that slows the project more than a sub-optimal governance model would. 

How often should you review and update the governance framework during a project?

Key triggers include significant scope change, a shift in stakeholder composition, a missed milestone that reveals a structural problem, or a regulatory change. The practical minimum is a review at each major phase. The risk of treating governance as fixed is that the model becomes misaligned with reality and the team starts working around it rather than through it, which is when delivery begins to quietly degrade. 

 
, ,