Stories from Strategies for Project Sponsorship. The authors had a call for stories about project sponsorship, people's
Stories from Strategies for Project Sponsorship The authors had a call for stories about project sponsorship, people’s experiences, from their eyes. Overwhelmingly, the negative stories outweighed the positive stories by 15 to 1. A few are shown below. Others can be read in Strategies for Project Sponsorship by James, Rosenhead and Taylor. Management Concepts 2013
Case Study 1: A major bank in Switzerland embarked on a risk management program. It was a challenging to implement; one of the problems it was supposed to solve was that at that time, the bank did not have an email or groupware system that allowed attachments, so everything had to be mailed. Initially, there was a real lack of progress on the project, and the first project manager left the project. Why? Because the project could not attract a sponsor. When the second project manager took over, he conducted a full review due to concerns that the project could not be delivered. He requested that the budget be more than doubled, which would allow the program to go global, not just cover a few countries. However, every time the new project manager attempted to get approval for the budget, the committee asked the new project manager to go away to get more and more information, never making a decision. Eventually, the project manager provided the committee with evidence that the bank would save a large amount of money per month by implementing the new system. But still there was no agreement. The project manager asked the committee, “Who wants to continue to delay the decision about this email system, thereby losing the bank this [previously declared to be significant] amount per month?” No one responded, so it was decided that the program had passed. The chief information officer (CIO) stood up and said that the project manager’s presentation was excellent and that he would act as sponsor moving forward. He hadn’t felt comfortable standing up for the project before consensus was reached, but once it was gained he was more than willing to be the sponsor. The process just to get the budget for the project approved took six months; actually performing the project for 15 countries took nine months. In the end, the project was a success in every sense, and was the bank’s first successful global initiative.
Case Study 2: The sponsor on my project just doesn’t seem to care about the project at all. She agrees to meetings with no problem, so it’s not as if she doesn’t have time. But when we’re meeting, she just goes through the motions, and as soon as the meeting is over, she doesn’t do anything else on the project. It almost seems as if it’s a relief for her to escape and go back to other matters of work. The project is struggling to get a real foothold in the organization, and I have lost a couple of key resources already to more “glamorous” projects
Case Study 3: The project was challenging (seemingly close to impossible at times), the steering committee was difficult to work with (to say the least), the project sponsor was everywhere, always in a bad micromanaging sort of way, the project team members’ interest and capability varied (to put it mildly), and I was a long way from home. From day one, the entire experience really tested me as a project manager, but I felt that I had conducted myself well—until the very end of the project, that is. Finally the project reached its conclusion. The deliverables were delivered and the company reluctantly agreed to sign off on the project. I had had quite a hellish experience over the months and just wanted it all to come to an end. And so when that final steering committee meeting was over and the minutes signed off, I have to admit that I practically ran to my car, jumped in, and tore These are stories from Strategies for Project Sponsorship and are copyright to James, Rosenhead and Taylor and should not be reproduced without permission. Book published by Management Concepts , May 2013
out of the parking lot deliriously happy. The road home called to me and, with some rock music blaring out of the speakers, I decided to write this one off to history and to never return again. The job was done! Except that it wasn’t. I was asked to go back and do a post project review. My heart sank, and I began to make up 101 reasons why I was too busy, too sick, too mentally incompetent, too “about to go on a spontaneous holiday,” and too “I just don’t want to go back,” in order to, well, avoid going back. I didn’t go back. Someone else did. And so that was that. Except it wasn’t. My inquisitiveness eventually got the better of me, so I sat down with the other project manager sometime after the review, and I discovered many things that I had never known about my own project. I learned that the company and the project sponsor had had a very bad experience on a similar project and, as a result, they were nervous about this project, very nervous indeed. The previous project was still going on and still costing money and not delivering. I discovered that the project I’d managed had been strongly championed by the project sponsor despite a lot of resistance from others in the business, and a lot—the sponsor’s reputation and possibly career—depended on a successful outcome.
Case studies 4 & 5 (the positive ones!) Case Study 4: We were designing a web-based order entry system for a customer support team. There had been a prototype, but we were not happy with it. Our sponsor was enthusiastic and stepped in to arrange a demo from a previous employer of their web order system. The team came up with some great ideas based on the demo and felt so good about the sponsor playing such an active role in the design process that they worked hard to deliver the system. Our sponsor was not prescriptive; she told us what the problems were as she saw them and then stepped away to let the project team figure out the best approach. Case Study 5: Our client was a state government entity on a fixed-price contract project. The lead sponsor on the project was a director-level person from the state team. He was very knowledgeable about the policies and procedures and had a great practical vision for what could be implemented. He used to spend hours and hours with project managers, business analysts, and even developers at times to explain the nuances of design and policy. He was one of the key success factors on the project. I was fortunate enough to work with such a sponsor; he really set the bar against which I evaluate other sponsors. These stories just underscore what everyone believes: a good sponsor can significantly raise the likelihood of project success.
These are stories from Strategies for Project Sponsorship and are copyright to James, Rosenhead and Taylor and should not be reproduced without permission. Book published by Management Concepts , May 2013
