The Instant Guide To Being A Project Sponsor

What role do you want to play?

First decide if you want to be a figurehead or active sponsor?

As a figurehead, you can go through the motions — attend Steering Committee meetings, review progress reports, meet with the project manager — but you won’t be bothered by details or even really know what’s going on with your project. And, if you’re lucky, your project will be delivered, hopefully somewhere near time and budget (otherwise you’ll have to blame the project manager and fire them).

This we call governance by hope. Possible. Unfortunately too common. And definitely risky.

The active sponsor role

Alternatively, you can take the role seriously and actively work to ensure the success of your business initiative.

For active sponsors, here are some guiding principles:

1. Remember you’re not accountable for bringing in the project on time and budget (that’s the project manager’s job). You’re accountable for delivering the business outcomes, benefits and value.
2. Your project is set up to implement change, whereas the business is set up not to change. For the project to be successful it must interrupt business-as-usual and change it. This needs your (and your steering committee’s) help, support and authority to achieve. No business change = no benefits = you fail.
3. Who you have on your project determines the outcomes and results. Two project teams given the same problem will produce two different solutions. Choose your project staff wisely and well. It is worth putting significant time into the project resourcing step.
4. You can’t focus on everything, so, in relation to the project, you should focus on three things in particular
   a. The Critical Path — how you are tracking to this path will determine your’ likelihood of an on time and budget delivery
   b. The Issues Log — unresolved issues that need to be resolved before implementation are an unknown, unplanned workload (and cost). If the issues log explodes, so can your project timeline and budget.
   c. The Risks Register — these risks are the threats to the project and its successful delivery. A series of new risks late in the project can threaten the whole viability of your project.
5. Project outcomes are not business outcomes. A project may deliver a system but the business doesn’t want a ‘system’, it wants to use the system to improve how it does business, competes and makes money. This is a different outcome, one that delivers real business value. Look at what your business initiative is going to deliver — is it a project outcome that the business hopes it will make work, or a business outcome that will deliver real, measurable business value?
6. Be seen to lead. Visit the project team at least once a month. Visit the business areas being impacted by your project — what do they think about the project? Visit your key stakeholders regularly — are they still supportive? You need to be seen to be leading, committed and involved. If you are losing business support you want to be first to know so that you can take action before its too late.
7. Be educated. Project Sponsorship is not intuitive or a natural extension of line management. It is a different set of skills and knowledge base, one that has to be learned. You wouldn’t want amateurs on your project, so why impose one at the top?
8. Keep a weathered eye out for cumulative problems — the little changes that sneak up on you. Unplanned staff turnover that loses key project knowledge, cumulative scope changes that redirect the whole project away from its original intent, poor quality outputs that indicate the project may be in trouble. With your broader perspective you need to review these leading indicators of failure to ensure your project doesn’t become another failure statistic.
9. Focus on success and make it happen.