Project sponsorship involves creating accountability, defining mission, allocating resources, managing funding, and managing other aspects of a project. The sponsor is responsible for ensuring the project helps the organization achieve its objectives and is politically aware. They create a timeline, allocate resources, and manage the project to completion.
Project sponsorship is an important part of initiating and completing a project within an organization. The role of a project sponsor varies, because they might work to create accountability, define a project’s mission, allocate or find resources, manage funding, and manage other aspects of the project through completion. A project sponsor has the ability and authority to initiate the project and help it succeed, and this person can often be found in the upper levels of management within an organization.
Strategic management is an important aspect of project sponsorship. The project sponsor is responsible for ensuring that the project helps the organization achieve its objectives. This includes being an advocate for the project and creating direction. Selling and persuading others about the feasibility of the project is important to get started. If the project needs to adjust to fit the organization’s goals, the project sponsor helps ensure that this happens. Being politically aware is helpful in this area because project sponsors understand how to work with others to get things done and achieve organizational goals.
Another important part of project sponsorship is the idea of accountability. Project sponsors create a timeline, track executives, arrange meetings to ensure progress is occurring, and hold those under their responsibility accountable for their actions through disciplinary action if necessary. This also means that a project sponsor must be readily available to those working on the project should anything arise that needs to be handled.
Allocating or finding project resources is also the responsibility of the project sponsor. Resources could include people, places and things, depending on the nature of the project. Financial resources are also important, and a role of the project sponsor is to provide or locate funding for the project, although project sponsors don’t always come up with the funds themselves. Budget creation and tracking is an important part of sponsoring the project after the funding is created.
Managing the project to completion means dealing with anything that might happen to delay the project. Project sponsors manage organizational policies that might get in the way and delegate work to those under them, including project managers and team leaders. Sponsoring a successful project involves great communication between the organization, the project manager and external sources.
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