Governance rarely fails all at once. It erodes through small exceptions that each seem reasonable at the time, until the reasonable exceptions become the normal way of working. These are the five patterns PROMA sees most often during a Project Maturity Assessment.
1. Status reports that never move
If a project has been "90% complete" for two reporting cycles, the report is no longer measuring progress — it is measuring optimism. Mature reporting ties percentage complete to a specific, auditable milestone, not a feeling.
2. Decisions made outside the documented escalation path
When a delay gets resolved through a corridor conversation instead of the governance forum designed to handle it, the forum stops being where decisions actually happen — and the audit trail stops reflecting reality.
3. Roles that exist on paper but not in practice
A RACI chart that nobody has looked at since the kick-off meeting is not role clarity. If two people both believe they own the same decision, or nobody believes they own it, the chart has already failed.
4. Risk registers that only get updated before a steering committee
A risk register updated the night before it is presented is a compliance artefact, not a management tool. Mature organisations treat the register as a live input to weekly delivery decisions.
5. No consistent baseline across projects
If every project manager runs their own version of "how we do things here," the organisation has no way to compare performance across the portfolio — and no way to know whether its overall delivery capability is improving or declining.
None of these signs mean an organisation is badly run. They mean the project environment has grown without a maturity framework underneath it — which is precisely what a Project Maturity Assessment is built to find and fix.