I was perusing the latest copy of Project Management Institute’s monthly journal PM Network (Jan-2013) and ran across Pique Performance pg. 23 “How do you excite an indifferent project sponsor?”.   There were four respondents to this question all of whom I will assume are very well experienced in the project management profession and qualified to offer an onion.

What struck me was the opening paragraph of the first three respondents:

1. “I show the relevancy of the project and how it will help the sponsor.  People normally think that a sponsor is motivated for him or herself.  Not always.”
2. “Sponsors don’t always realize the importance of the project.  To get them excited, show how the project is good for the company.”
3. “I sell the project from the very beginning to get the stakeholder excited.  The sponsor must feel that he or she will gain something valuable as a result of the project.”

The fourth opened with:

“You shouldn’t have to excite the project sponsor if the right sponsor was chosen in the first place.  The sponsor should be supportive and see the value in the project.”

Resources

First a definition of sponsor from PMI’s PMBOK 5^th edition:

Sec. 2.2.1 Pg. 32

• Sponsor.  A sponsor is the person or group who provides resources and support for the project and is accountable for enabling success.  The sponsor may be external or internal to the project manager’s organization.  From initial conception through project closure, the sponsor promotes the project.  This includes serving as spokesperson to higher levels of management to gather support throughout the organization and promoting the benefits the project brings.  The sponsor leads the project through the initiating processes until formally authorized, and plays a significant role in the development of the initial scope and charter.

What’s the Problem?

While this is only a portion of the PMBOK description it provides the points I want to make.  What I have learned from many years in the profession is that if you are assigned a project that has a sponsor who seems non-engaged you have no project.  If the project sponsor needs to be shown the value of the project I really wonder how the project and sponsor got together in the first place?  While I am certain the first three respondents to this question were sincere, it appears from their answers that they are used to having to promote a project to the organization.  Or that the respondents are confusing ‘(all other) stakeholders’ with ‘project sponsor’.

What I think should happen

What I have learned, sometimes painfully over my career, is that for project success, support and cheerleading for a project must come from the organizational executive staff.  This means that the sponsor already has a vision of the ‘value’ of the project and understands what the project needs to deliver to the organization.  If you have a project in need of an engaged sponsor you have an organization that is immature in the concept of professional project management.

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Project charter purpose

According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) the project charter is the starting point for all other project activities.  PMBOK describes the project charter as “a document that formally authorizes the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.”  The key point in this statement is ‘authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.’  This is the only real point as without organizational resources you have no project.  And it is why creation of this document is so crucial to any project’s – large or small – ultimate success.  A project might range in complexity from simple internal project such as standup and install a replacement file server to large complex project such as design and construct the Trump Tower in Chicago.   Each is a ‘project’ since it is a temporary activity which has a beginning and an end.  And to be successful each requires the development of a project charter which reflects the desired output of the project sponsor.

Without the charter, which as we already know is a ‘document’; we really do not know what the sponsor is expecting to receive from the project.  And if we do not at the bare minimum possess a very high level of understanding of what the project sponsor is expecting from the project we are on the path to failure.  The project charter will be the foundation for the project scope and will be the determiner as to the final project quality.  Since the project charter is the overall guiding document for the project the project sponsor needs to have a significant role in the development of this document.

Drivers

The key input to the project charter is the Statement of Work (SOW).  For external projects a contract would normally be executed for the SOW.  The main input for the SOW is the business case or business need of the requesting organization.  The business case has a direct link to the organizational strategic plan and will describe the sponsor’s required output of the project.  Business drivers will be linked to an organizational goal(s) and can cover a need for a single functional group or for the entire organization.  For complex projects the business case will described in a separate document(s) and will be one of the many documents supporting the need and detailing the benefit that will be realized from the project.  For simpler projects the business case might be included as part of the SOW.

Even for smaller projects a business need or case should be developed to provide a rational basis for managing the overall organizational project portfolio.   As with the strategic plan, all project business cases should have a built in review process to ensure the project is 1) meeting the original needs of the business case and 2) that the business case remains relevant to the strategic plan.  Other inputs could factor into project charter such as service level agreements (SLA’s) found in IT outsourcing contracts, environmental factors such as government regulatory (such as FDA, EPA, or FAA) and the organization’s marketplace.  The project charter will also be influenced by internal factors such as standard operating processes (SOP’s) and the maturity of the organization in regards to project management.  The existence or lack of a Project Management Office (PMO) will also have a major bearing on the project charter.  The analysis of the organizational project portfolio and approval of projects to support the strategic plan will be managed at the senior level of the organization.    The PMO in mature organizations will dictate the format of and required inputs to the project charter and will lead to a higher level of project success throughout the organization.   Outputs of the project charter at a minimum need to include the project justification, high level requirements, summary budget and schedule, and the sponsor’s ‘measurable’ project objective(s).

What the project charter drives

The project charter is the initiation point for the project and directly drives the creation of the project management plan and resultant subsidiary plans.  The project charter is the document that provides the level of understanding between the requestor – internal functional area(s) or external customer — and the performing group.  In order to develop the project’s baseline scope, schedule and cost and collect the project requirements we need to have a clear reference as to the sponsor’s needs.  Without this information the project team is simply guessing at what is required for the project objectives.  Considerable organizational resources can and most likely will be wasted if this crucial step is skipped or not fully understood.

What you should conclude

Without a clear documented charter a project will always be in a state of justifying its existence and searching for clear sponsor to navigate the organizational bureaucracy.  The project will have no means to claim that objectives have been met and that the project supports the organization’s strategic plan.  A project without a clear charter will not be able to measure progress against objectives or milestones.  ‘Charterless’ projects will have a higher tendency to finish over budget and behind schedule or be terminated without realizing any ROI to the organization.

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