The Difficult Sponsor

yes give them real time examples to make them understand

Escalate to whom as to how? Any thoughts?? I'm curious to know

What???? Change the sponsor????

I thought the sponsor is the owner of the project. As far as I have seen in large corporations the sponsor is a functional manager (for smaller projects) or an executive manager (for larger projects). The sponsor is the creator of the project and the person that allocates resources to it.

PMs in most cases are not even managers in the true sense of the word how can they change an executive manager from his duties? But ignoring this detail changing the sponsor basically means the termination of the project as the project exists for the sponsor to be able to achieve his/her goals. Changing the sponsor probably is an executive level decision, but the new sponsor may have different goals so basically a new project has to be created.

Am I missing something?

Would these changes be considered as a "threat"? Or it depends on organisations perception? Thoughts??

The project sponsor is usually a senior or a very senior employee from an organization that has ultimate decision power over the projects he/she has started.

I don't want to offend anyone but I find it a non-sense for a much junior employee such a project manager to question the decisions taken by a much more senior employee (the project sponsor). Not to mention that the PM effectively works for the sponsor even if there may be no direct line management subordination.

It is not the job of the PM to evaluate how good or poor the sponsor's decisions are but more importantly how can we know for sure that the PM is right and the sponsor is wrong?

Not to mention that the sponsor may have other priorities for which he needs founding so he may consider some projects to be less important than others or than other non-project activities. If needed the sponsor should be able to cut founding to a project in order to allocate the founds to other more important activity.

Don't frame the issue as junior employee v. senior employee. Instead, see yourself as the expert in project management. Sponsors are typically not experts in project management. As a project management expert, you have a moral and professional obligation to provide honest advice and information. If the sponsor wants to cut scope that you know will significantly decrease quality or increase risk or increase long-term operational costs, etc., then you have a responsibility to speak up and let the sponsor know. If they don't believe you, then educate them with research and case studies. Be nice, but firm. Do stakeholder analysis. Seek out peers or supervisors of the sponsor that you can appeal to and see if they can help resolve the situation. If you find yourself on a project that you are confident will fail due to the mis-management of a sponsor, you may be better off removing yourself from the situation as you don't want to be associated with project failure, and blame tends to be directed at the project manager when projects fail.

Point taken. But, as a PM, it is his right to know it in the first place