Firing Your Project Sponsor

Kathleen Melymuka   Today’s Top Stories   or  Other Project Management Stories  

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February 23, 2004 (Computerworld) -- The $9 million project was behind schedule because the executive sponsor was incompetent. "He was a very nice guy," recalls the project manager, Virginia Robbins, who's now director of IT at a different company, Chela Financial Cos. in San Francisco. "But he got caught up in details."
Robbins talked to the sponsor's boss about her problems with the sponsor's performance, but the boss asked her to continue muddling through. As weeks passed, she became increasingly worried. Finally, she asked the sponsor's boss to meet her for lunch and helped him understand that the sponsor's failure would soon be his failure. "I pulled out our plan, showed him our progress to date and explained why we would be six months late," she recalls. Soon after, the sponsor was replaced.
The project sponsor is the executive or manager with the fiscal authority, political clout and personal commitment to see a project through . An effective executive sponsor can remove barriers and get key support for an IT project. But some sponsors -- whether from flagging interest, overwork or unsuitability for the job -- turn out to be so dysfunctional or underperforming that they drag the project down.
"We've seen sponsors ditching projects, or they do a slow withdrawal from the project," says Gopal Kapur, president of the Center for Project Management in San Ramon, Calif. "They don't meet with the project managers or do what they need to do."
But replacing an underperforming sponsor is a dangerous game. "It's politically touchy," says Catherine Tomczyk, a project manager at First Data Corp. in Greenwood Village, Colo. "It's risky because if the sponsor is in a position to cause you pain, he might."
Here are some strategies for getting a bad project sponsor out of your way:
Plan Ahead
Work upfront to be sure you get a great sponsor from the beginning, says Neil Love, author of The Project Sponsor Guide (Project Management Institute, 2000). "It's easier to influence the choice than to have to fix it later."
Sign a Prenup
When the project charter is signed, meet privately with the sponsor and hammer out the procedure you will follow in case of inadequate performance, Kapur suggests. Follow it up in writing. Later, if things go wrong and you begin to talk to others about the sponsor's performance, "you're not going behind the sponsor's back," he says. "You're just following the process agreed upon in first place."
Give Him an Easy Out
State in the sponsorship agreement that if the sponsor can't fulfill his obligations, he will pass the role to a new sponsor, suggests Sue Young, CEO of ANDA Consulting in Williston, Vt.

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Firing Your Project Sponsor

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