Project Management SIG: 'Managing Project Sponsorship' April 24, 2008

Many executives are assigned as project sponsors, but their organizations do not spend time training and explaining their expected roles and responsibilities during project life cycles. The accidental project manager role is well known, and the same applies to sponsors. An effective sponsor can have a tremendous impact on project success. However, reality presents quite a different picture. The sponsor role appears confused in many organizations. Sometimes the sponsor is not very involved in the project. On the other hand, sometimes the project sponsor is too involved and acts or tries to act as a super project manager, generating more conflict and problems. Management support is always needed during the project life cycle. In fact, the sentence: "we need more management support" is very common in most organizations. In every project, the project manager and his/her team needs management support.

Presenter Randy Englund shares his many years of experience, as a senior project manager and practitioner at Hewlett-Packard Company and as an executive consultant.

The topic of effective project sponsorship has emerged as a KEY CHALLENGE in every organization doing projects, especially when you wonder why projects are not producing desired results. As experienced practitioners, co-author Alfonso Bucero and Englund wrote Project Sponsorship: Achieving Management Commitment for Project Success to describe the roles and responsibilities of sponsorship and cover how to obtain, sustain, train, and mentor a sponsor. They draw upon personal as well as experiences from many colleagues in case studies, examples, questionnaires, checklists, and templates.

Free for eBig Members, $10 for non-members.

Official Website: http://www.ebig.org/sig/sig.aspx?SIGid=41