ADVISORY
By Yogi Schulz
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Project managers routinely juggle many balls. There are issues to advance, team members to encourage, vendors to push, stakeholders to placate, and status reports to write. The list goes on and on.
Too often, project managers add managing their project sponsor to that lengthy list. That perspective is misguided. Instead, project managers should view their project sponsor as someone who can help them, someone who can be expected to accept specific thorny tasks that only a senior executive can deftly handle for the benefit of the project.
Here are some of the ways that project sponsors help project managers. Consider using some of the points in this article during your next meeting with your project sponsor.
You can explore these and other tips to help project sponsors and managers be more effective in our new book, A Project Sponsor’s Warp-Speed Guide – Improving Project Performance. It’s available from Amazon at this link.
Communicates project benefits throughout the organization
The project sponsor and steering committee members must enthusiastically communicate, sell and defend the project benefits in meetings and informal discussions throughout the organization. If these individuals fail to champion the benefits or, worse, challenge the benefits or criticize the project, the project is doomed.
For example, they frequently remind the organization of the project’s value proposition to maintain its commitment to the project at various management meetings or town hall events.
When this visible public support is not evident, project managers provide project sponsors and steering committee members with brief talking points to encourage more communication.
Guides the project manager
The project sponsor guides the project manager. The project sponsor offers organizational insights about internal politics, corporate history, and prejudices held by various stakeholders. This information is valuable to project managers, who often do not have enough seniority and reputation for the organization to accept their necessary but unwelcome recommendations.
When project managers feel neglected, they can reach out to their project sponsors to reconfirm the following best practice points for building their relationship:
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How to cite this article: Schulz, Y. (2024). How project sponsors can help project managers, PM World Journal, Vol. XIII, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/pmwj145-Sep2024-Schulz-How-project-sponsors-can-help-project-managers.pdf
About the Author
Yogi Schulz
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Yogi Schulz has over 40 years of Information Technology experience in various industries. Yogi works extensively in the petroleum industry to select and implement financial, production revenue accounting, land & contracts and geotechnical systems. He manages projects that arise from changes in business requirements, from the need to leverage technology opportunities and from mergers. His specialties include IT strategy, web strategy and systems project management.
Mr. Schulz regularly speaks to industry groups and writes a regular column for IT World Canada and for Engineering.com. He has written for Microsoft.com and the Calgary Herald. His writing focuses on project management and IT developments of interest to management. Mr. Schulz served as a member of the Board of Directors of the PPDM Association for twenty years until 2015. Learn more at https://www.corvelle.com/. He can be contacted at yogischulz@corvelle.com
His new book, co-authored by Jocelyn Schulz Lapointe, is “A Project Sponsor’s Warp-Speed Guide: Improving Project Performance.”
To view other works by Yogi Schulz, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/yogi-schulz/
