Making Steering Committees Work in Sitecore AI Programs
As Sitecore continues to expand into AI driven capabilities, I’ve been thinking a lot about how governance structures are holding up, especially steering committees.
Most teams already have them in place. They exist, they meet regularly, and they’re meant to provide oversight. But in a Sitecore AI program, that traditional model starts to break down pretty quickly.
AI introduces a different level of complexity. There’s more ambiguity, faster decision cycles, and a much tighter dependency between business, content, and technology. What I’m seeing is that many steering committees haven’t really adapted to that shift, and instead of helping the program move forward, they end up slowing it down.
So the question becomes, what actually makes a steering committee effective in this context?
It stops being about status
One of the biggest disconnects is that steering committees are still being run like status meetings.
In my programs, that information is already well covered. We maintain a Smartsheet dashboard that tracks progress, risks, and overall health, and it’s reviewed week to week with the core team. There are also regular working sessions, standups, and detailed status reports.
By the time a steering committee happens, none of that should be new information.
In a lot of cases, we’ve already walked through it multiple times, whether it’s the Smartsheet dashboard, Jira tracking, or UAT readiness. The expectation at that point isn’t to re explain it, it’s to decide what to do about it.
That shift sounds small, but it changes the tone of the meeting pretty quickly.
What does add value is using that time to focus on:
- Decisions that need alignment
- Tradeoffs that need to be made
- Risks that actually require leadership involvement
When the conversation stays at a status level, it usually feels repetitive, and it becomes harder to get real engagement from the group.
It includes the right perspectives, not just the highest titles
Sitecore AI programs don’t sit neatly within one team. They cut across marketing, technology, data, and often multiple business units.
In my experience, that shows up quickly in steering discussions. You’ll have questions around personalization strategy, reverse tagging, or how something will actually be implemented in XM Cloud, and not everyone in the room has the context to weigh in.
Because of that, steering committees need a mix of perspectives, not just seniority.
You need people who:
- Understand the business outcomes
- Understand how the platform actually works, especially within Sitecore XM Cloud and headless architectures
- Understand the data and AI implications behind what’s being proposed
I’ve seen these conversations stall when the right people aren’t in the room, or when decisions need to be taken offline to another group. That’s usually a sign the committee isn’t fully set up for the decisions it’s being asked to make.
It stays anchored in outcomes, not features
A pattern I’ve seen across Sitecore programs is that conversations start to drift toward features.
Things like personalization models, component level tagging, or AI driven content recommendations come up often. Those are all important, especially as teams start thinking about how to structure data for AI use cases.
But without tying them back to outcomes, it becomes harder to prioritize.
This comes up a lot during design system and content modeling discussions. Teams will spend time debating how flexible components should be, how tagging should work, or how content should be structured across sites.
Those are important decisions, but without grounding them in things like personalization impact, content reuse, or speed to publish, it becomes harder to move forward.
In steering committees, try to consistently bring the conversation back to:
- What this is driving from a business perspective
- Where value is actually being created
- What tradeoffs are worth making given timelines and dependencies
Otherwise, it’s easy to get pulled into solutioning too early.
It makes tradeoffs visible
AI programs naturally introduce competing priorities, and I see this a lot when teams are working through things like content modeling, tagging strategies, and personalization.
Speed versus quality
Automation versus control
Standardization versus flexibility across business units
These don’t go away, and they’re not meant to.
What tends to happen is that teams try to optimize for everything at once, especially in multi site or multi business unit environments. That’s usually where things start to slow down.
For example, trying to standardize components globally while also supporting highly customized local needs. Without a clear decision at the leadership level, those tensions tend to show up later in delivery, where they’re harder to resolve.
Steering committees are one of the few places where those tradeoffs can be surfaced clearly and discussed at the right level.
It actively removes friction across the program
Another shift I’ve seen is how risks and blockers are handled.
In more traditional programs, steering committees often act as a place where issues are escalated. In Sitecore AI programs, that’s usually not enough.
The expectation should be that the group is actually helping move those issues forward.
In practice, that often looks like:
- Clarifying ownership when there are overlapping responsibilities between marketing, IT, and data teams
- Unblocking dependencies with systems like AEM Assets or other DAM platforms
- Aligning on governance decisions, especially around tagging, metadata, and content structure
- Addressing resourcing gaps before they start impacting delivery timelines
A lot of this shows up in more subtle ways too. Things like unclear ownership, side conversations happening outside of the main forums, or even duplicate workstreams moving in parallel without alignment.
Those aren’t always visible in a status report, but they’re usually very visible in how the program is progressing.
Steering committees are one of the few places where that can be called out and addressed directly.
It has a clear and consistent structure
Structure matters more than it seems, especially when you’re balancing multiple workstreams and stakeholders.
Across my programs, the steering committees that work best tend to follow a consistent format:
- Decisions that need to be made
- Risks or blockers that need input
- Strategic topics that need alignment
Anything more detailed usually lives in Jira, working sessions, or the weekly reporting.
In practice, this also helps separate what belongs in steering versus what belongs in working sessions. Detailed UAT walkthroughs, component level discussions, or Jira level tracking shouldn’t live here.
When that boundary isn’t clear, the meeting tends to drift into delivery details, and it becomes harder to stay focused on decisions and alignment.
It reinforces ownership
Ownership can get blurred quickly in Sitecore AI programs.
Between marketing, IT, platform teams, and data teams, it’s not always clear who is responsible for what, especially when new AI capabilities are introduced.
This is something that comes up often in steering discussions, particularly when decisions start bouncing between teams.
For example, questions around who owns tagging strategy or how data should be structured for AI use cases can easily move between groups. Without clear ownership, those decisions slow down and often get revisited multiple times.
That’s where the steering committee plays an important role, not by redefining roles constantly, but by reinforcing clarity:
- Who owns personalization strategy
- Who owns data quality, tagging, and taxonomy decisions
- Who owns the platform, performance, and implementation
It evolves as the program matures
What works early on doesn’t always work later.
At the beginning of a Sitecore AI program, there’s usually more focus on alignment, vision, and defining how things like content, data, and components will be structured.
As the program matures, the focus shifts toward scaling those decisions across business units, optimizing performance, and driving adoption.
That shift should be reflected in the steering committee as well, whether that’s adjusting topics, changing the level of detail, or bringing in different stakeholders over time.
Final thought
Steering committees aren’t new, but the way they operate in Sitecore AI programs needs to be more intentional.
In my experience, the difference is pretty clear.
When they’re working well, they help drive alignment, remove friction, and keep the program focused on outcomes.
When they’re not, they tend to add weight without adding much value.
And most of the time, that comes down to how closely they reflect what’s actually happening day to day across the program, not just how they’re structured on paper.
