Programmes are usually governed against budget and schedule. Neither tells you whether the investment case still holds — for that you have to track the assumptions the case was built on.
The case is a set of assumptions
Every approved programme rests on claims: this process will take fewer people, this platform will retire that licence, this capability will win that revenue. Those claims are testable long before the programme ends.
Once approved, though, the case is usually filed. Reporting shifts to spend and milestones, and the assumptions go unexamined.
Stage gates need a real stop option
A gate that has never stopped anything is a status meeting. Define, in advance, the evidence that would justify stopping or reshaping the work, and who is empowered to decide.
This protects the programme as much as the budget: teams do better work when the criteria are explicit.
Put benefits in someone's budget
Benefits that live in a programme document rarely materialise. Benefits reflected in an operating budget, owned by the executive whose numbers they change, usually do.
That single step turns transformation reporting from advocacy into accountability.