Project Sponsorship: Achieving Management Commitment for Project Success, Second Edition

The success or failure of any project often hinges on how well the project sponsor—the person who funds the project and ensures that desired benefits are achieved—relates to the project, the project manager, and other stakeholders. However, executives who are assigned as project sponsors often have little if any experience understanding their roles and responsibilities during the project life cycle. Problems in communication and execution are inevitable as long as senior managers and project managers do not understand the mechanics of their relationship.

The second edition of Project Sponsorship—which includes an Appendix with new case studies, expanded assessment tools, and templates—shows how project sponsors and project managers can develop the skills they need to manage successful projects. Randall L. Englund and Alfonso Bucero—experts in the field of project management—have written the definitive guide for educating all stakeholders on the nature of project sponsorship. They describe in detail the responsibilities of the project sponsor, from communications and liaison, selection and training, problem solving, mentoring, and feedback, to the review of project execution. The project sponsor and manager learn how to negotiate effectively with each other and the project team to achieve their commitments.

This book is a key resource for expanding best practices in project sponsorship across organizations. Project Sponsorship helps project sponsors establish directions for the future, communicate through vision, create aligned high-performance teams, and focus on planning—all of which will lead an organization to success. This book illuminates the stairway to achieving excellence in project sponsorship.

About the Authors

RANDALL L. ENGLUND, MBA, BSEE, NPDP, CBM, was a senior project manager at Hewlett-Packard (HP) and a member of its corporate Project Management Initiative team whose purpose was to lead the continuous improvement of project management across the company. Drawing on many years in program management for high-tech new product development, R&D, marketing, field service, and manufacturing, he now serves as an independent executive consultant at the Englund Project Management Consultancy, where he guides managers and teams on implementing an organic approach to project management.

He speaks, trains, facilitates, and consults across industries, online, and at universities on improving the project environment. His ongoing purpose is to help people discover, change thinking, and implement ways to optimize results from project-based work. Although he completed a master’s degree in business administration, specializing in management at San Francisco State University, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara, his real education came while managing large projects at HP for 22 years and handling field service and supervising installation at General Electric (GE) for 10 years.

Englund has contributed numerous articles and papers on creating an environment for project success, upper management support, leading with power, speaking truth to power, negotiating for results, and creating a political plan. He is coauthor, with Robert J. Graham, of Creating an Environment for Successful Projects (Jossey-Bass, 2004); with Robert J. Graham and Paul C. Dinsmore, of Creating the Project Office: A Manager’s Guide to Leading Organizational Change (Jossey-Bass, 2003); and with Alfonso Bucero, of The Complete Project Manager: Integrating People, Organizational, and Technical Skills and The Complete Project Manager’s Toolkit (Management Concepts, 2012). He contributed the chapter “Executive Imperatives: The Role of Project Sponsorship in Organizational Success” in Organizational Project Management: Linking Strategy and Projects (Management Concepts, 2010) and chapters to AMA’s Handbook of Project Management, Fourth Edition (Amacom, 2014) and Project Portfolio Management: A Practical Guide to Selecting Projects, Managing Portfolios, and Maximizing Benefits (Jossey-Bass 2005).

PMI awarded Englund with the Distinguished Contribution Award in 2013, citing a great contribution to the profession worldwide, presenting, consulting, coaching, and mentoring project managers, and convincing executives about the added value of project management implementation in organizations.

ALFONSO BUCERO, MSc, PMI-RMP, PMP, PfMP, PMI Fellow, is an independent project management consultant and speaker. He is founder, partner, and director of BUCERO PM Consulting in Spain. He was managing director at International Institute for Learning Spain in Madrid, serving as a project management consultant and training executives, explaining the need for and advantages of project sponsorship. His background was as a project manager at Hewlett-Packard Consulting, where he developed and managed the project management office (PMO) implementation whose purpose was the continuous improvement of the project management discipline across the organization.

During his 13 years at HP, he managed various customer, infrastructure, development, and change management projects. He spent his last two years at HP selling and implementing the project office and convincing upper managers about the advantages of project sponsorship. From 31 years of practical experience managing and consulting on projects worldwide, Bucero shares many real case studies and a fun attitude with seminar participants. As a project management believer, he defends passion, persistence, and patience to achieve project success.

Bucero has a computer science engineering degree, is a doctoral candidate, graduated from PMI’s Leadership Institute Master Class, and served as a PMI Component Mentor.

In addition to coauthoring Project Sponsorship and The Complete Project Manager, Alfonso authored The Influential Project Manager: Winning Over Team Members and Stakeholders (CRC Press, 2015) and Today is a Good Day: Attitudes for Achieving Project Success (Multi-Media, 2010). He served as an international project management assessor for the International Project Management Association, sponsor, and then president of the Project Management Institute’s Barcelona and Madrid chapters. He is contributing editor of the “Crossing Borders” column in the Project Management Institute’s PM Network magazine, author of the Spanish book Project Management: A New Vision, and contributed chapters to Englund, Graham, and Dinsmore’s Creating the Project Office and Cleland’s Project Management circa 2025 (2010).

PMI awarded Bucero with the Distinguished Contribution Award in 2010 for his long and varied body of work, and designated him as PMI Fellow in 2011 for his sustained contribution to the development of the profession internationally.

Both authors are frequent presenters at international PMI congresses and PMI SeminarsWorld® as well as keynote speakers and workshop facilitators for various organizations. They contributed the chapter “From Commander to Sponsor: Building Executive Support for Project Success” in Advising Upwards (Gower, 2011).

The authors bring a practical slant to this book—the point of view of people who have been through it all. They are practitioners of an organic approach to organizational development and the project management discipline, and they share the same passion, persistence, and patience for implementing project management in organizations. Their ongoing commitment is to bring forth lessons from productive movement between reflection and action. They put effort into systematic thinking about excellence in project sponsorship, sharing ideas with colleagues, leveraging best practices or inventing new ones, applying or experimenting in their fields of practice, observing and documenting the results, making modifications, and then doing it all again. This book is a product of those lessons. And did we mention . . . having fun!