Who is the Project Sponsor?

The project sponsor is an individual (often a manager or executive) with overall accountability for the project. The sponsor’s main concern is to ensure the project delivers the planned benefits and acts as the representative of the organization, playing a vital leadership role. The donor, who acts as the “client” to the organization and approved the contract, cannot take on this role.?The project donor is an external organization that provides funding for the project. The donor organization is not part of your organization's staffing and decision-making function and does not have control or influence over the people, processes and results within your organization. If, for example, the project manager needs more resources or needs higher-level help in getting barriers to implementation removed, an appropriate sponsor would have the power, political will, and influence to do this.?

Your project sponsor is internal to your organization and is in a position (either actual position or has significant influence) to support the project manager in multiple ways in bringing the project to completion.?The Sponsor is said to hold one of the most important roles in terms of project success or failure. An effective Project Sponsor should be responsible for:

1. Goals: The Project Sponsor should ensure that the business need is valid and correctly prioritized within the project.
2. Communication: Clearly communicate on aspects of the project with stakeholder groups and senior management.
3. Keeping to Schedule: The Sponsor is heavily involved in ensuring that the project is kept to the original schedule, along with the Project Manager. In order to manage the schedule, the Sponsor and Project Manager should meet frequently and review the timeline.
4. Changes: A project can experience changes at any time. The Project Sponsor needs to ensure that these changes are properly managed to ensure that they don’t have any negative impact on the project.
5. Resolve Issues: Some issues are out of the reach of the Project Manager, such as decisions on changes and conflicting objectives. The Project Sponsor takes control of these issues and ensures that they are solved efficiently and effectively.
6. Support: The Project Manager needs consistent support during a project. The Project Sponsor is on hand to provide this support in the form of mentoring, coaching and leadership. The Project Sponsor also supports the Project Team, especially in terms of scope clarification, progress management and guidance.

The Project Sponsor ultimately holds many responsibilities as part of their role. In the Project Management world, some people may believe that the Project Sponsor is there to just report the Project Manager’s updates to the rest of the organization. However, in reality, the?Project Sponsor holds a much more active role in the life cycle of a project and is the owner of the final product. Having a Project Sponsor that can reach all of these responsibilities is worth holding onto. Carrying out a project without an effective Project Sponsor increases the risk of the project failing, unfortunately the Project Manager will be answerable to a project failing.

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