Sponsors provide financial support, champion the project and make key decisions. So, it’s crucial that you understand how your project sponsors make decisions. By watching for these types of decision-making, you can adjust your approach to get the best decisions and support your project’s success.
- Fact-based decisions. Project sponsors want facts and data they can use to guide their decisions. For fact-based decision-makers, you need to know the data sources they value most. For example, internal trusted advisors or external entities like consulting companies. Find the data and the data source that your sponsor values to help them make decisions.
- Intuition-based decisions. Leaders with sponsorship experience are often swayed by their intuition, which helps produce quick decisions. To support this type of sponsor, identify when they’re using intuition for decisions and then validate the assumptions they make. That way, you reduce the risk that flawed intuition presents.
- Decisions based on team experiences. Many sponsors will poll their team members before making decisions, because they value the team’s experiences and opinions. This typically results in more buy-in from the project team. However, attempts to?gain consensus can delay decisions. For this approach, add buffer time to the schedule to offset these delays.
- Political decisions. All too often, sponsors make project decisions from a political standpoint. Their bosses or other key stakeholders have expectations and sponsors hesitate to make decisions that may disappoint those stakeholders. While these decisions can be sound, they may add risks. Work with your sponsor to make sure you both understand those risks and their potential impact.
- Market-driven decisions. The driving force for a sponsor’s decision making could be what’s happening in the marketplace. That makes sense because project success often depends on leap-frogging the competition. With a market-driven sponsor, keep a close eye on the status of the triple constraints (scope, cost, and time). Scope is often fixed, so you need to watch how that affects cost and schedule.
Have you seen other types of decision-making? If so, what advantages and disadvantages did they present? What can you do in those situations? Share with us in the comments section.
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Chief Executive Officer specializing in Business Operations and Data Science
1 年Another great article Bonnie. Thank you again for your sharing your insights and experiences with us. ??
Fund Administrator at William Buck South Australia
1 年This is a great article on how sponsors make decisions. I've definitely seen all of these types of decision-making in my own experience. It's important to be aware of the different types of decision-making so that you can adjust your approach accordingly. For example, if you're working with a sponsor who is fact-based, you'll need to be sure to provide them with the data and analysis they need to make decisions. If you're working with a sponsor who is intuition-based, you'll need to be sure to understand their gut feeling and help them to validate their assumptions. I've also seen situations where sponsors make decisions based on political or market-driven factors. In these cases, it's important to be aware of the risks and potential impact of these decisions. For example, if a sponsor is making a decision based on political pressure, it's important to be sure that you understand the potential for backlash from the team or the public. If a sponsor is making a decision based on market forces, it's important to be sure that you understand the potential for changes in the market that could affect the project.
Henkel Senior Project Manager
1 年Thanks for sharing good advice, it's quite good approach if we think where the decision comes from.
Community Manager & Assistant Manager | Project Management & Data Analysis Expert | Experta en Gestión de Proyectos y Análisis de Datos
1 年thanks Bonnie!! ??