Engaging Sponsorship - team up during project launch by Anticlue

One of the first steps according to PMI is to assign the PM in initiation. As the PM, the first thing I need to know is who the Project sponsor is. Engaged Sponsorship is critical to the project success. I'd like to share with you a few tips of the trade to help assure a fully engaged sponsor during the project launch.

The first tip in today's entry is to openly and frankly discuss the business benefits this project is trying to achieve. If there are no benefits, the business really shouldn't engage in the project. As a PM, I like to have a good understanding of what is needed to achieve the benefits. I also like to have some preliminary work or metric on where we are today. I enjoy hearing the sponsor's vision of a day in the life in the future. What improvements or opportunities we are focusing upon. This discuss is well worth the time, and it clarifies the vision for both of you. Sometimes if you are really lucky it will help to clarify what the sponsor is passionate about pertaining to their job.

The next items, I like to review are the standard project management processes. Here the discussion is surrounding how the project will be managed and the sponsor's agreement. We talk about scope change control process and at what authority levels decisions can be made. Reviewing and deriving a common escalation pattern, who to escalate what type or issue. Finally we talk a little about business versus technical issues, and an approach which would work for this project. Its nice to have business issues escalated to the sponsor.

After this preliminary discussion, I follow up in anywhere from a couple of days to a week. Asking if there are any concerns, commonly this meeting is to review the project team roles and responsibilities. We talk a lot about the change transition or business transformation from the new to the old way. The risks that the sponsor or myself foresee, and who should be accountable for those risks.

In practice I have found the first time, these discussions are received well, and they also truly set the project up for success. Everyone is comfortable understanding their roles.

Futher Reading:

• The five key responsibilities of a project sponsor


• Engaging Sponsorship - Starting off on the right foot before project launch


• Achieving physician leadership engagement

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