About this Event
Speakers
Dr Sarah Coleman
Sue Milton SSM Governance Associates
Eileen J Roden BA (Hons) MA (Dist) FAPM MIoD P3GP LicIPD Co-Founder and Director, House of PMO
Nick Dobson CITI
Agenda
Week 1, 5th March, Dr Sarah Coleman - Setting the scene, project organising for IT projects
Week 2, 12th March, Sue Milton - Achieving robust IT project governance for the organisation: Governance is people and people shape governance - both aspects must be understood to achieve IT project success
Week 3, 19th March, Eileen J Roden, Governance in practice: top-down and bottom-up oversight from concept to live operation
Week 4, 26th March, Nick Dobson, Benefits Realisation Management: from plan to reality Followed by a panel session with all speakers.
Timetable
18:30 Intro & announcements
18:40 Talks commence
20:00 Talks conclude with (optionally) post-event networking
21:00 Building closes
Synopsis
Week 1, 5th March - Dr Sarah Coleman - Setting the scene, project organising for IT projects
IT projects provide change and create value for organizations, supporting their ambitions and strategy. They translate organisational strategy and public sector policy into impact and enable competitive advantage; as such, their structure and organisation are crucial to supporting the value and benefits that organizations expect from their IT investment. How temporary IT projects are organised matters to the way they are resourced, governed, monitored and executed regardless of their size, time horizon or complexity. In this BCS Spring School 2026 session, we’ll look at the considerations of organising for temporary projects to enable a foundation for IT project success.
Please come with some reflections on the way your own IT projects are organised - and your organisation’s approach to IT project organising - for discussion.
Week 2, 12th March - Sue Milton - Achieving robust IT project governance for the organisation: Governance is people and people shape governance - both aspects must be understood to achieve IT project success
As information technology is now part of every aspect of our business, we can safely assume every project will have IT embedded in it somewhere, turning a business project into an IT project and vice versa.
Successful IT projects rely on having the right IT project governance in place, complementary to the organisation’s approach to corporate governance. Tensions will arise during IT projects when clashes occur between how projects and businesses are governed, often because Business sees governance as a compliance exercise whilst IT sees governance as a way of managing technological developments. Both are right, but only up to a point.
This is why, together, we will discuss what governance means, the influence people have in creating and shaping governance, how these align with corporate values and legislative requirements, and how we can develop and apply great IT project governance to support successful outcomes and optimum benefits realisation.
Week 3, 19th March - Eileen J Roden - Governance in practice: top-down and bottom-up oversight from concept to live operation
Governance plays a critical role from the earliest stages of project and programme formulation through to delivery and benefits realisation. Yet it is often experienced as fragmented, overly bureaucratic, or disconnected from how work actually gets done.
In this session, Eileen J Roden explores governance in operation, focusing on how PMOs support effective decision-making by providing both top-down strategic oversight and bottom-up delivery insight. Drawing on real-world experience, the session looks at how governance frameworks, roles, and controls interact with human behaviours, risk, and uncertainty across the project lifecycle.
The session will highlight how practical governance helps organisations balance scope, cost, time, risk, and benefit; supports proactive attention to issues and risks; and maintains focus on value beyond project closure. The emphasis is on governance that enables delivery and innovation — not governance that restrains it.
Week 4, 26th March - Nick Dobson - Benefits Realisation Management: from plan to reality
This participative presentation and discussion-based session will bridge the gap between the theoretical (and often fictional) activity of planning and mapping benefits and the actual attainment of real value by the organisation.
Whilst the project and its manager cannot be held accountable for benefits focus will hinge on what their responsibilities, in this area, really need to be. More importantly, perhaps, are the answers to the question of who else and what else needs to be brought into play, beyond the project team, in making benefits really happen?
Much of the discussion is therefore likely to hinge on the roles of the sponsor, senior user, change agent, operational user and client. What strategies (force majeure, marketing, engagement) prove more effective in which situations, to embed the changes will also, likely, be a rich vein of discussion.
Followed by a panel session with all speakers.
About the speakers
Dr Sarah Coleman focuses on improving the shaping, organising, mobilisation and resilience of projects, programmes, portfolios and to ensure benefit and impact. She is an experienced practitioner, author, researcher and educator.
Her extensive experience has been gained across central government, public services and corporates including work in digitisation, financial services, telecoms, professional services, nuclear and health amongst others. As adjunct professor at Alliance Manchester Business School she designs and delivers for executive education programmes to enhance project leadership and sponsorship capability, and project resilience. She authors and contributes to professional bodies of knowledge, research and professional journals. Her recent PhD research focused on how organisations evaluate the benefit and impact of projects and programmes following delivery in order to support investment decisioning.
Sue Milton is a governance specialist assisting companies to increase their organisational effectiveness. Sue focuses on three aspects for sound business and IT integration:
- aligning business strategy and IT innovation with sensible control and oversight for robust and resilient organisations – placing business continuity at the strategic level.
- encouraging the integration of safety, security and usability by design within business requirements as crucial foundations for good project governance.
- dealing with FOMO (fear of missing out) that allows for swift technology adoption but without strategic thinking that then enables shadow IT to hide in plain sight.
Eileen J Roden is a leading authority on PMOs, portfolio management, and governance in practice, with over 30 years’ experience spanning hands-on delivery, consultancy, and professional education.
She is the Lead Author of P3O® Best Management Practice, co-creator of the PMO Competency Framework, and Chief Examiner for the PMO Essentials suite of professional qualifications. Through this work, Eileen has played a significant role in shaping how PMOs are designed, assessed, and continuously improved across organisations worldwide.
Eileen is a co-founder of House of PMO, the professional home for PMO practitioners, and PMO Learning, a leading global provider of PMO training and development. Her work focuses on helping organisations move beyond theoretical models to establish PMOs and governance frameworks that genuinely support decision-making, delivery confidence, and long-term value.
With experience across transport, finance, pharmaceuticals, defence, utilities, and the public sector, Eileen is known for her practical, people-centred approach to governance — balancing structure, behaviour, and organisational reality to make governance work in practice.
Nick Dobson has been a practitioner, consultant, and educator in project and programme management for forty years. His experience ranges from large built-environment programmes to modest business change initiatives – and everything in between. Early in his career Nick was steeped in a culture and processes that demanded outcome orientation from the word go. This prompted an early recognition that the only impetus for change is to improve on the current position, this resulted in impacts and, particularly, benefits, becoming a career-long area of interest and focus.
Ticket costs
(Prices stated are inclusive of fees, and VAT will be added.)
Tickets give you access to all four weekly sessions.
The slides and recordings will be available only to attendees.
Venue tickets:
- BCS members: £45.00
- Non-members: £90.00
- Students / Unwaged: £22.00
Online tickets:
- BCS members: £20.00
- Non-members: £40.00
- Students / Unwaged: £12.00
Refunds/cancellations
A refund, excluding fees, will be issued if a cancellation request is received within 14 days of the booking date or by noon on Thursday, 26 February 2026; otherwise, name substitutions will be allowed after this date.
Our events are for adults aged 16 years and over.
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If you are attending in person, please familiarise yourself with the Visitor Instructions for the BCS London Office.
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For overseas delegates who wish to attend the event, please note that BCS does not issue invitation letters.
This event is brought to you by: Project Mangement SG
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, Ground Floor, London, United Kingdom
GBP 14.40 to GBP 108.00
