Being a Great Sponsor

Michelle Stronach has over 20 years of experience in the project management field, with experience creating successful PMOs and implementing project, portfolio management and IT governance frameworks. Michelle truly appreciates the value of feedback and welcomes comments on her articles. https://twitter.com/mlstronach

  Business Case   Communications Management   Requirements Management   Strategy  

Congratulations, you've just become a sponsor! You are the proud owner of a brand new idea intended to propel the organization toward visionary goals. You are the senior person responsible to the business for the success of the project. It's no easy task figuring out what needs to be achieved and gathering what is needed to attain results. You will make the difference between successful or failed outcome. Your role is important and you not only want to do it well, you want to do it great.

What is a successful project, or a failed one for that matter? A cancelled or held project doesn't necessarily mean it failed if it was stopped for the right reasons. The business world is dynamic and sometimes with change, project objectives may no longer align to organizational goals and need to be re-evaluated. It is only failure if the organization continues to waste valuable resources on something that no longer makes sense.

Most projects do finish, and those completed on time and budget may even be called success. But a project can't really claim success if the outputs of the project failed to achieve results. Success can only be measured by the degree to which the project achieved all the expected outcomes.

As a project sponsor, you know what you need to do. You know you must back the business case, securing necessary resources while being both champion …

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