A Sponsorship Report Card
By Bob McGannon, PMP

You have been assigned a high profile project that will involve significant technical and business process changes across your company. It appears that you have adequate initial budget to prepare preliminary plans for the project. You have access to a small team that brings the right talent to your effort – and a sponsor has been named for the project. This is a good start, but one vital piece of homework remains – you need to complete a report card on your sponsor. Like all report cards, passing grades on required classes are mandatory – and an overall grade point average is something to which we must pay attention.

Control of Financial Decisions

You sponsor needs to directly control the budget for the project or needs to have delegated control over the finances you need to tap in order to run the project and appropriately plan, develop, test, and implement the product(s) of your project. Your sponsor gets an “A” (4.0) if she or he holds the checkbook themselves, a “B” (3.0) is the grade for someone who has received delegated responsibility to manage the finances for the project. For each person your sponsor needs to brief to get authority to allocate money to the project drops the sponsor’s grade by one point.

Understanding of Business Processes Affected by the Project

This is a vital knowledge area for a sponsor because the changes brought about by your project are likely to change business processes, creating a need for new interfaces, new procedures and necessitates significant training for impacted staff members. A sponsor who does not understand or grasp these requirements could be problematic, at best.

Grading your sponsor is largely a judgment call in this area – however a grade of at least a “B” is probably deserved if the sponsor takes time to review high level process models and poses questions. Should your sponsor actually suggest changes to the process models, or points out exceptions, then an “A” is in order.

Management of Required Resources

A sponsor who is in the direct reporting structure of the resources you need and communicates the relative priority of your project versus other activities in the business portfolio gets an “A”. This grade is valid even if your project isn’t at the top of the priority list. The very same priority placement that might cause you to wait for resources is the same one that can be used to discuss scheduling changes with the sponsor based on resource availability. Give your sponsor a “B” if they are in the direct reporting structure of your required resources, but do not have or communicate a priority scheme for the organization.
Should critical resources you need report to a manager that is not in your sponsors “chain of command” than the best grade your sponsor can get for this area is a “C”. If the sponsor does not have a good relationship with the manager who controls resources, a “D” or “F” in this area is the appropriate result.

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