Executive sponsor

Executive sponsor (sometimes called project sponsor or senior responsible owner) is a role in project management, usually the senior member of the project board and often the chair. The project sponsor will be a senior executive in a corporation (often at or just below board level) who is responsible to the business for the success of the project.

The sponsor has a number of interfaces and responsibilities for the project.

The responsibilities for which the sponsor is accountable to the board are:

• Provides leadership on culture and values
• Owns the business case
• Keeps project aligned with organization's strategy and portfolio direction
• Governs project risk
• Works with other sponsors
• Focuses on realization of benefits
• Recommends opportunities to optimize cost/benefits
• Ensures continuity of sponsorship
• Provides assurance
• Provides feedback and lessons learnt

The governance activities that take place between the sponsor and the project manager are:

• Provides timely decisions
• Clarifies decision making framework
• Clarifies business priorities and strategy
• Communicates business issues
• Provides resources
• Engenders trust
• Manages relationships
• Supports the project managers role
• Promotes ethical working

In addition to these activities the following activities take place between the sponsor and other Project stakeholders:

• Engages stakeholders
• Governs stakeholder communications
• Directs client relationships
• Directs governance of users
• Directs governance of suppliers
• Arbitrates between stakeholders

Due to the problem solving needs of the role the executive sponsor often needs to be able to exert pressure within the organization to overcome resistance to the project. For this reason a successful executive sponsor will ideally be a person with five personal attributes - understanding, competence, credibility, commitment and engagement.^[1]

A few research studies have been published that not only detail the role of this individual within project management but also provide a way to ensure that the success of a project is greater increased if this individual plays a more active role.

See also

Project Sponsorship

References

1. Sponsoring Change: A guide to the governance aspects of project sponsorship, Association for Project Management, 2009. ISBN 978-1-903494-30-1

• Exploring the Role of the Project Sponsor, conducted by members of the Project Management Institute, in particular, Dr Lynn Crawford and Christine Brett (both at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia).
• Top Challenges in managing Executive Sponsor Programs , based on research from the Executive Sponsor Industry Association