Computerworld -
About five years ago, the IT department at CH2M Hill set out to install a new piece of business software. An engineering company based in Englewood, Colo., with more than $5 billion in annual revenue, CH2M Hill has many lines of business, ranging from nuclear cleanup to waste water treatment to construction of clean rooms, each with its own technological needs and priorities. David Ladek, global IT business alliance partner at the company, knew it made most sense to deploy something equally useful for all. But getting the various lines of business to agree on specifications was a challenge.
Ladek knew he needed someone with enough authority throughout the company to bring competing priorities together. Fortunately, there was organizationwide recognition that the software was necessary, and a president of one of the business units agreed to be the project's sponsor.
CH2M Hill is a fairly non-hierarchical organization, and the sponsor couldn't force the other business units to cooperate, Ladek says. But the sponsor's passionate enthusiasm as well as his influence as a high-level executive drew all the required parties to the table. "He went back to our businesses and said, 'I want a senior person from each business group to sit on this committee with me,' " Ladek recalls. "Essentially, it became a steering committee made up of all the business groups with the right people to take what we were doing back to their users and bring us feedback. I don't think IT could have gotten them there by ourselves."
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Computerworld - About five years ago, the IT department at CH2M Hill set out to install a new piece of business software. An engineering company based in Englewood, Colo., with more than $5 billion in annual revenue, CH2M Hill has many lines of business, ranging from nuclear cleanup to waste water treatment to construction of clean rooms, each with its own technological needs and priorities. David Ladek, global IT business alliance partner at the company, knew it made most sense to deploy something equally useful for all. But getting the various lines of business to agree on specifications was a challenge.
Ladek knew he needed someone with enough authority throughout the company to bring competing priorities together. Fortunately, there was organizationwide recognition that the software was necessary, and a president of one of the business units agreed to be the project's sponsor.
CH2M Hill is a fairly non-hierarchical organization, and the sponsor couldn't force the other business units to cooperate, Ladek says. But the sponsor's passionate enthusiasm as well as his influence as a high-level executive drew all the required parties to the table. "He went back to our businesses and said, 'I want a senior person from each business group to sit on this committee with me,' " Ladek recalls. "Essentially, it became a steering committee made up of all the business groups with the right people to take what we were doing back to their users and bring us feedback. I don't think IT could have gotten them there by ourselves."
The project was a success. "We turned this into an enterprise initiative that became more than just the implementation of a software tool," Ladek says. Without the sponsor, things might have gone very differently. "There are plenty of examples in our industry of applications like this turning into shelfware," he notes.
Ladek himself has seen what can happen when IT tries to go it alone. "We've had times when we looked at a project and didn't think we needed an executive sponsor," he says. "And I can tell you, that's part of why it failed."
Experiences like these are why The Standish Group, whose Chaos reports offer regular updates on IT project success rates, says having an executive sponsor is the most important element in the success or failure of a project. "We used to say that user involvement was the No. 1 reason projects were successful," says Jim Johnson, chairman of The Standish Group. "We changed that this year to having the right executive sponsor, because it's such a critical role."
Only 37% of IT projects are successful, according to the July 2012 Chaos survey. Meanwhile, 42% went over budget, weren't completed on time or didn't deliver what they were supposed to deliver, and 21% failed altogether. Johnson says the projects that succeeded either had skilled executive sponsors or were "purely mechanical" undertakings that required no business-side buy-in.
Some projects are so small that they don't have a widespread effect, such as installing a wireless router in a new office. Others are part of the routine, such as replacing network components as part of ongoing -- and already budgeted -- maintenance plans. Projects like these may not need executive sponsors and may not be noticed by anyone outside of IT.
But for everything else, "I wouldn't do a project, even an IT infrastructure project, without an executive sponsor," says Peter Weis, CIO at Matson, a Honolulu-based shipping company with $1.6 billion in annual revenue. "It has to be someone outside of IT, and in general, the higher up the better."
Why can't a sponsor be a high-ranking IT executive? "IT doesn't fully own the business concerns," says Gary Heusner, client partner at Geneca, a custom software development company in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. "If we were meant to be the chief marketing officer or chief operating officer, those are the jobs we would have."
Keys to Success
Formal Sponsorships Are the Way to Go
At many organizations, enlisting an executive sponsor is a matter of having a conversation and gaining a verbal commitment. But some of the most successful sponsorships are much more formal affairs.
At Heartland Payment Systems, "we have a very defined project initiation process," says CTO Kris Herrin. "It asks who is the sponsor, what the cost savings are going to be, or what the revenue generated will be."
IT shares a list of the projects it has under way with all Heartland executives. It's a helpful practice, Herrin says, because it allows executives to make educated judgments about which initiatives are most important, rather than simply fighting for their own to be completed first. "They'll say they want something by Q3," Herrin says. "But when they see some other project, they may say, 'Yeah, that's more important; mine can wait.' That constructive conversation, when you understand what the other person is really trying to accomplish, is a key to getting things done."
At Matson, every large IT project comes with governing documents that name not only the executive sponsor, but a second-in-command business unit manager. Executive sponsors are given a written description of their responsibilities. And they -- just like IT team members -- earn financial incentives when projects succeed.
"It was an evolution here," says Matson CIO Peter Weis. "We found working together over time that our interests were aligned. One project, four or five years ago, we said, 'Let's try this where we use similar incentives for project deliverables.' And then over time it became a standard practice. Now it's part of the way we work."
Weis credits this approach for the ongoing success of Matson's executive sponsorship relationships, and of its IT projects themselves. "It's a part-time activity," he explains. "All the business executives on these projects already have full-time jobs. We're allocating millions of dollars for these projects. So formalizing the role and making it visible is important."
— Minda Zetlin
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