Project Governance items give you a way to account for standard yet dynamic overhead effort related to Professional Services.
Required vs. Non-required Governance Items
Governance items default to being required. This means they will be added to every project.
Non-required governance items can be added to a project by a survey and are helpful for more complex projects.
Example Uses
Examples might include:
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Project Management time
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Documentation generation effort
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General contingency for risk
We allow you to account for these by adding standard or dynamic amounts of effort to a project outside of the normal services.
How Governance Relates to Services
Governance items represent overhead effort that is calculated from service effort, not instead of it. Services define the base level of effort on a project, and governance effort is derived from that service effort either as a percentage or a fixed amount.
Because governance effort depends on services, governance can only be reapplied to services where service effort exists. This relationship is important when configuring how governance appears in pricing summaries.
Effort, Price, and Cost Calculation
Governance price and cost are calculated using a resource in your account. Users can define the effort in one of two ways:
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As a percentage of the total effort on a project, multiplied by a resource rate and cost.
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A set amount of effort, multiplied by a resource rate and cost.
Governance effort is always calculated separately from services. How that effort is displayed in pricing summaries is controlled independently.
Create default governance items in Settings
In settings, you can define standard governance items. Navigate to Settings > Governance > Project Governance
Here you can see a full list of Governance items. Required governance items are added to every project.
To add a new item, click + Add Governance.
Here, you can define new default governance items:
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You can give the governance item a description.
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Select the resource used to account for the governance item
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Please select whether you want to define it in terms of a percentage of the total effort on a project or a fixed number of hours via the radio button.
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Set the percentage or fixed number of hours, depending on your previous selection.
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You can decide how the platform will handle the effort of governance. By default, the platform will spread the effort across all the phases of your project allocated by service. You can also choose to align the Governance item to a specific phase, or align it to a Project Management Phase. This will impact how our Connectwise Manage integration handles Governance Items.
Click Submit to save your new default item.
Governance in a Project
Within a project, you can modify or remove any of the governance items that were added by default when a user created the project.
You can also create new items with all the same parameters that were available in settings. Note that items created within a project will only exist in the project they were created in.
Governance items' price and cost will be calculated from the rate table selected for a particular project.
Phase Alignment of Price and Cost
Within a project, unless you have selected to align your governance items with a specific phase, a "Project Management" phase will be displayed on the PS Pricing page to account for Project Management Revenue and Cost.
The Assign Effort to Service option does not impact PSA integrations. Governance items are sent to the PSA independently of how pricing is displayed in ScopeStack.
Assign Effort to Service
The Assign Effort to Service option controls how governance effort, cost, and revenue are presented in pricing summaries. It does not change the total project effort, service effort, or what is sent to a PSA.
When enabled, the calculated governance effort is reallocated into the services in the selected phase. Each service absorbs a proportional share of the governance based on its percentage of the phase’s total service effort. Governance will not appear as a separate pricing line.
When disabled, governance is reported as its own pricing line and is not blended into service pricing.
Important Allocation Behavior
Governance effort can only be allocated to services when the selected phase contains at least one service with non-zero effort.
If a governance item is aligned to a phase with no services, or services with zero hours, there is no service effort to allocate the governance to. In this case, governance effort still exists, but its pricing cannot be reapplied to services and may not appear in pricing summaries.
This can result in differences between totals shown in pricing views and project breakdown documents.