What Questions to ask for knowing your Project Sponsor?

It is not because you are not a native speaker but because I am not a native English speaker. My intent to that quote is that if the sponsor has lots of his daily duties to be spent other than for issues of the project, his timely engagement might not be guaranteed even from the very beginning of the project.

Hi Markus,
I would suggest you add additional questions to 3 of your proposed ones to get more details from the Project Sponsor about his/her perception or knowledge.
My proposals in capital letters:


Who will benefit from this project? == WHAT ARE THE INDIVIDUAL EXPECTATIONS FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW?

What is the customer or department group the project aims to impact? == HOW (FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW)?

May there be any parties who are likely to feel threatened/voice strong opinions against the project? == FOR WHICH REASONS (FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW)?

It is important for me to understand the Project Sponsor's point of view before addressing the points with the other stakeholders. For example: if a party is likely to voice strong opinion against the project, is it because the business context or the inherent complexity is too difficult? Is it because they don't agree with the assigned PM or with the project executing organisation? Or...? If you have the position of your Sponsor in mind while preparing the first meeting with this party, you may prepare and manage it in a better position.

OK for me to see the questions as inputs to your tool.

I am looking forward to seeing the result.

Hi Philippe,

thanks again for your input and your additions. I have just added them to the existing questionnaire and if we have this section on the hook now, let's just go forward with this one regarding the reviewing part; so here we go:

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This is like the section "Stakeholders" looks like now:

Who will benefit from this project?

What is the customer or department group the project aims to impact and how?

May there be any parties who are likely to feel threatened/voice strong opinions against the project?
- If so, for what reasons, do you think?

Who are the primary/strong supporters for this project?

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So, please feel free to comment those questions. Suggestions for additions and/or improvement are highly welcome!
While reviewing the questions please take into account that this will be the very first meeting (maybe it has even to be split into more than one) with the project sponsor; therefore it is not needed to go too much in detail. The results should set the baseline for each of the topics and will be transferred into upcoming processes and developed further there.

Thank you so much in advance!

Just one more thing:
When commenting it would be great if you could use the "reply" function so that it is always clear which posting you referring to, cause there will be some more topics coming now ... ;) Thank you again!

Regards,

Markus

Hi Markus,
Your updated questions are OK for me.
I understand we are in the context of the first meeting with the Project Sponsor and we should not enter into many details but it is also important to show the Sponsor you are able to pinpoint immediately some potential concerns or issues. This is the reflect of the PM experience.
Also Sponsors like freshly assigned PMs ask a lot of questions about the project to show there commitment!

Hey Guys,

i have thought about and decided to provide the "sections" in a separate discussion thread each. This for for more transparency and a better overview and also hopefully for getting more answers since this would be becoming a very confuse discussion thread ...

So please participate in those other threads coming also. Thanks again!

Markus