In simple a project needs people who come up with the idea (the originator), wants the benefits (project sponsor), who manages the project (project manager) and who undertake the work (the project team).
Chapter 2 showed that a process or method is nothing without the culture, systems and organization supporting it (see Figure 2.2). Those related to projects are no exception. Hence, to understand “projects”, you need to have a firm grasp of who the players are and what is expected of them. The roles described here are relevant to a single project (see Figure 5.1). Roles required for running a programme or a portfolio are described in The Programme and Portfolio Workout.
In simple terms, a project needs people:
He/she is the person who identifies the “need” for a project and publishes it in the form of a proposal. This person can come from any function or level inside or outside the organization. Ideally, if the idea comes directly from the strategy, the originator will become the sponsor.
The project sponsor is an essential role on a project and is accountable either to higher management, such as a programme sponsor (if part of a programme), for the overall success of the project. The project sponsor is accountable for championing the project’s business objectives, engaging senior stakeholders, making key decisions and intervening in high-priority issues involving all benefiting units (using a project board if appropriate), approving key deliverables and making decisions or recommendations at critical points in the project’s life. The project sponsor is usually a director, executive or senior manager.
Project sponsor
The project sponsor is accountable for realizing the benefits for the organization. He/she will:
The project sponsor is ultimately accountable to the chief executive/ president via a project board (where required) or to an intermediate management team or board.
An underlying principle of project management is that of “single point accountability”. This is meant to stop things “falling down the cracks” and applies not only to the management of projects and the constituent work packages, but also to the direction of a project; there should be only one project sponsor per project. In this respect, the term “sponsorship” should not be used in the same sense as “sponsoring Chris to run a marathon,” where the objective is to have as many sponsors as possible. If a project sponsor is to be effective, rather than just someone who gives out money, he/she will need to be:
Project sponsorship is not merely a “figurehead” role. A sponsor is fundamentally accountable for ensuring “why” the organization is spending time and resources on a particular project. He/she must ensure the business objectives are clearly articulated, that whatever is being created is really needed and this need is fulfilled in a viable way. The project team will have their heads down, developing whatever outputs and deliverables are needed. The sponsor has to keep his/her head up, making sure the need still exists and the capabilities being produced fit the need. This cannot be over-emphasized; current research indicates that a prime cause of project failure is the lack of effective sponsorship and stakeholder engagement (we will come to stakeholders later, in Chapter 26).
Some may see the role of change agent and leader as synonymous. If so, that is good. For others, I have separated these out so it can be related to what many consultants and academics often refer to as “the management of change”. Every project will create some change in the organization, otherwise there is no point in undertaking it! However, some changes are ”easier” to effect than others as they align with the status quo and do not cross any politically sensitive boundaries. In essence, most of the people carry on as they always have done. Other changes, however, are fundamental and will result in shifts in power bases internal to the organization or even external, such as in unions, suppliers, or customers.
Every project will create some change in the organization, otherwise there is no point in undertaking it!
All organizations are “political” to some extent and the greater a project’s scope to change the status quo, the more those involved will need to be tuned in. Whilst projects create change, that change may not necessarily be beneficial to everyone it touches and this will trigger a political dimension to the sponsor’s role. People’s attitudes to “corporate politics” differ, ranging from believing it is unnecessary through to seeing it as an opportunity. Suffice to say, you must acknowledge the political aspects, understand the sources and motivations of the key players and then develop an appropriate approach to them.
The decisions a sponsor will need to make fall into two broad types:
The first type relates to go/no go decisions at the gates, decisions regarding how to react to issues and changes and decisions on when to close the project. The second type relates to particular outputs or outcomes from the project.
If a person is unable to make decisions, the project sponsor is not likely to be a role they will be comfortable with. Most of the decisions which have to be made will be predictable (in terms of timing, if not outcome!) and backed up by evidence. The project documentation, such as business cases and closure reports, are designed to provide the sponsor with the information he/she needs.
If being a leader, change agent and decision maker are what is required of a project sponsor, then what sort of personal attributes does a good project sponsor need to have? There is nothing magic in the answer; as sponsorship is essentially a business role, the attributes are what you would expect for any good business executive. The exception is that, in a project managed context, business leadership is highly likely to cross departmental boundaries (See Chapter 2, lesson 6) and hence the sponsor cannot rely solely on “position power” get his or her way.
Performance in a role can be looked at as a combination of four factors: knowledge, experience, skill, and behaviours and the key ones are shown in Table 5.1. At such
Knowledge | Skills |
Strategic perspective | Ability to inspire and motivate |
Market and customer | Communication |
Supplier and supply chain | Relationship building |
Professional and technical | Analysis and problem solving |
Business law | Creativity and innovation |
Financial | Learning |
Behaviours | Experience factors |
Honesty | Evidence of business change leadership |
Ability to delegate | Evidence of endurance and perseverance |
Confidence | Evidence of adaptability |
Commitment | Evidence of intuition |
Positive attitude | |
a leadership level, however, it is the behavioural attributes which should be paramount. Gaps in knowledge and skills may be compensated for by building a team to ensure completeness, or by appointing project board members for their particular skills.
Table 5.1 shows those attributes which have been shown to be essential to good project sponsor performance. Basically, they need to be sound business leaders who understand how to work across the organization and not just in departmental hierarchies or silos.
The key relationships for a project sponsor is between them and:
As far as the project manager is concerned, he or she should expect the following from the project sponsor:
Unfortunately, project sponsors are not usually selected for the role but implicitly “self-appointed” through the job they have. In which case, it is the organization’s overall attitude to project management and the role of the project sponsor that will have the most effect on their performance, in other words, organizational maturity, which is looked at more deeply in The Programme and Portfolio Workout. Nevertheless, an executive with the right sponsor attributes in a poor organization will perform better than a poor sponsor in a good, or mature, organization. As far as the project manager is concerned, he or she will need to work with whoever they are told to. If they are unfortunate enough to have a sponsor who displays the wrong behaviours, they should not give up. The project manager should always remember it’s “the sponsor’s project” and their risk. Sometimes a sponsor may make what look like bizarre decisions but this may be because they have information which cannot be released. I remember a chief executive of a top UK company once saying, “I will never lie to you, except when the rules of disclosure from the City require me to.” A project manager needs to make “personal contract” with the sponsor; this is, after all, a person-to-person relationship, where the success of one relies on the other. If the sponsor isn’t performing as expected, assume they want to undertake their role and coach them (sensitively!): make requests for direction and decisions. Most project sponsors will not be trained project managers and will be uninterested in the minutiae of project management techniques; don’t assume or expect them to understand the “jargon”; look at the world through their eyes – think about benefits and risk. Similarly, report the world through their eyes but don’t try to take over their role.
Publicly available research continually points out that organizations with active sponsors are more likely to have better project outcomes, leading to better overall business performance. Standish believes “The most important person in the project is the executive sponsor. The executive sponsor is ultimately responsible for the success and failure of the project.” I agree. BUT most business leaders spend less than 5 per cent of their time on sponsor related activity. Yet surely, their role is all about leadership and making change happen – leading change . . . and mismanaging change is the commonest reason CEOs get fired. If you look at project failure, six reasons are commonly cited and four, possibly five, of those come under the accountability of the sponsor:
The inadvertently poor sponsor
I was a project manager for a financial systems project, with the divisional CFO acting as sponsor. I met up with him prior to the project starting and we agreed I would report, face to face, every two weeks or, in exceptional circumstances, as needed. The project was going well until the supplier started taking people off the work and deadlines were threatened. I flagged this up in the report and at my face-to-face meeting. He was pleased to find out about this and was able to rectify this through executive level contact with the suppliers’ senior management team. On leaving his office, he remarked, “Why don’t other project managers come to me in plenty of time?” The answer I gave was that they were scared of him as he had a reputation for balling anyone out who came with bad news. There was silence, followed by a simple, “Do I really?” This particular executive had a reputation for being difficult to work with as a project sponsor and so most project managers did not take the time to build a working approach with him, that both found workable within his busy schedule. His frustration stemmed from there being no personal relationship with the managers and that if he did happen to hear from them, it was always bad news. True, he could have made more of an effort to build the relationship himself, but a project manager should know how to fill the vacuum and make the essential first approach if necessary.
If you do a web search on project failure, you will find a plethora of reasons derived from as many research projects as you care to look at and all of them contain elements of wisdom pointing to failure being determined at an organizational level above the project manager. Despite this wealth of research and learning, many business leaders continue to ignore the issue or treat it informally. Everyone says they believe it is critical to project success and yet sponsors:
The project sponsor’s trooper – the project champion
Often a project requires high-level sponsorship from either a vice president or even the company president him/herself. Unfortunately, senior ranks do not always have enough time to carry out all the duties being a project sponsor entails. Here, it is best if they delegate the role and name someone else as sponsor. Half-hearted sponsorship can be very demotivating for the team and may even lead to the failure of the project. Alternatively, another manager may be assigned to act on their behalf. This person is often a “project champion” who is as committed to the benefits as the sponsor himself. In all practical terms, the project champion acts on a day-to-day basis as the project sponsor, only referring decisions upwards as required.
A project board is usually required for projects spanning a number of processes or functional boundaries and/or where the benefits are directed to more than one market segment or function. Alternatively, the role can be undertaken by a programme board or management team. Unfortunately, bodies such as project boards are often ineffective, adding little value for the project sponsor. It is the responsibility of the chairman to keep board members focused on the key aspects of the project where their experience can be used to best effect. Bearing in mind the political nature of some projects, project boards are often essential as a way of formally engaging senior stakeholders, without whose help, the project may not achieve its aims. Be very careful, however, as boards solely created for stakeholder engagement purposes rarely perform effectively.
In the example structure in Figure 5.1, a project board is there to support the project sponsor role and chaired by the project sponsor. In some cases, the project board may be at a higher level to which a project sponsor is accountable. In other cases, a project board may not even be necessary. There is no wrong or right approach, but if a project board is created, it must be clear what its purpose is, the line of accountability and the limits of authority (including decision making), especially in relation to the accountability and authority of the project sponsor. Such accountabilities and authorities should be defined in a terms of reference.
A project board is often called a steering committee, steering group, or steering board.
The project board
The role of the project board (if required) is to support the project sponsor in realizing the project benefits and in particular:
Who’s running this organization?
Do you often find people in your organization hunting around for someone to “sponsor their project?” If so, who do you think is running the organization? Surely, it is the accountability of the business leaders (i.e. sponsors) to set the direction and identify the needs that must be met. They should be the ones looking for people to manage their projects, not the other way round. Is your organization led by its generals or by its troops? Is your project framework going to be a vehicle for change or merely an elaborate organization suggestion scheme?
The project manager is accountable to the project sponsor for the day-to-day management of the project, involving the project team across all necessary functions and engaging stakeholders as necessary. Depending on the size of the project, the project manager may be supported by a project administrator, or office support team.
Project manager
The project manager is accountable for managing the project on a day-to-day basis. He/she will:
The bodies of knowledge of various associations, such as the Association for Project Management or the Project Management Institute, seek to define the attributes or competencies of project managers. They are, however, not always easy to apply in practice. To put them in context, consider three levels of project manager competence:
Performance in a role can be looked at as a combination of four factors: knowledge, experience, skill, and behaviours.
Table 5.2 comprises a summary of these and shows those attributes which have been shown to be essential to good project manager performance. The extent to which a person complies very much depends on their level of attainment. You would expect an intuitive project manager to have far less project experience than a judgemental one. (Source: CITI Limited.)
The preceding paragraphs give the dimensions to look for when selecting a project manager and are sufficient for you to discuss a brief either with other managers or your Human Resources department. When it comes down to it, however, how would you distinguish between people with similar skill sets? What should you look for or avoid?
Knowledge | Skills |
Project definition | Team building |
Project planning | Facilitation and coaching |
Benefits management | Conflict resolution |
Schedule management | Analytical thinking and problem solving |
Financial management | Organization |
Risk and opportunity management | Administration |
Issues management | Technical expertise |
Change control | Communication (verbal; written and active listening) |
Behaviours | Experience factors |
Integrity | Evidence of delivery |
Self-motivated – proactive | Evidence of problem solving |
Comfortable with ambiguity | Size and complexity of teams managed |
Open | Number of projects managed |
Even-handed | Complexity of projects managed |
Approachable | Evidence of effective leadership |
Good reasons for selecting a particular project manager include the following:
Poor reasons for selecting a project manager, if taken in isolation, include the following:
The team managers are the “doers” who report to the project manager and are accountable for prescribed work packages and deliverables. This may range from a complete subproject to a single deliverable. It is essential that the full experience of the team be brought to bear on any problems or solutions from the start. In the case of large projects, the project manager may choose to have a small core team, each member of which manages his or her own subsidiary teams, either as work packages or subprojects. Project teams often comprise two parts:
The team managers
Team managers are accountable to the project manager. The role of team members is to:
Team managers form the bedrock of a successful project. Not only do they have to be competent in the specialist work relating to their assigned deliverables, but also need to be competent in a range of project management techniques. If you look at the accountabilities above, you will notice that many aspects including planning, reporting, risk and issues management, change control, and stakeholder management are the same as those required by a project manager. It is not unusual to find that work scopes for some team managers’ work packages dwarf other project manager’s projects in terms of team size and spend. It is for this reason many organizations include project management techniques as a core part of every manager’s training and development. If team managers are not competent at the management aspect of their role, as part of a project team, it is the project manager’s accountability to brief them on what is needed and, if necessary, tailor the techniques to suit the competence levels of those who need to use them.
It is essential that each member of staff working on your project has a clearly defined:
All groups or individuals associated with the project and which make up the team should be identified and listed with their role, scope and accountabilities.
Assurance covers all interests of sponsorship, including business, user, and supplier needs. It should be independent of the project manager. Assurance should be focused on the project’s business objectives and whether they will be achieved. As such assurance is inextricably related to the project sponsor role.
Project assurance
Specific responsibilities include assuring:
Everything relating to assurance is the accountability of the project sponsor. Thus, in the absence of project assurance, the sponsor is accountable for the activities. The most common reason for creating a project assurance function is simply because a sponsor may not have the time or competence to undertake the sponsor role effectively. By having a project assurance function, the time pressure can be relieved and more experienced people used when needed.
Those undertaking assurance roles need to be able to take an independent view to enable them to challenge and confront any issues they come across. Often the major issues are well known within a project team, but political or other constraints prevent those involved from speaking up about the “elephant in the room” which everyone can see but no one acknowledges is present; or to point out the facts behind the “emperor’s new clothes” where some aspect of the project is exposed, whilst all those involved pretend it is well covered. Those undertaking assurance must have the gravitas and management style to be trusted by the project team and stakeholders and need to provide constructive and practical views based on insight and experience. Assurance undertaken on the basis of scoring points off the project team or doggedly sticking to checklists will not be beneficial to anyone. Finally, don’t confuse “project assurance” with “quality assurance”; the former is about ensuring every aspect of the project is run to ensure the business objectives will be met, whilst the latter is focused on the processes, procedures, and practices which ensure quality is built into the deliverables.
Remember, in many business-oriented projects, the participants are likely not to be fully trained and capable project managers. They may need to have someone who can give them the confidence to work in a way which may be alien to them.
The project coach or facilitator is accountable for supporting the project manager, project sponsor, and project board. This may be by pure coaching or by giving advice, facilitation, and guidance on project management. Both approaches will help project teams, experienced and inexperienced, to perform beyond their own expectations. It is a role which is found infrequently but can prove extremely effective.
Remember, in many business-oriented projects, the participants are likely not to be fully trained and capable project managers. They may need to have someone who can give them the confidence to work in a way which may be alien to them.
The power of coaching and facilitation
A cross-functional team was put together with the aim of reducing the delivery time for a telecommunications product from ten days to less than two hours. The team comprised people drawn from line and operational roles who had little project management experience. A project coach was employed to facilitate the setup stages of the project and provide ongoing guidance throughout the execution. Setup was hard work and many of the team complained that it was wasting valuable time which could be better spent doing “real work”. Perseverance and a commitment on behalf of the coach to seeing the team succeed got the team through the early stages. Once the development stage was underway, all of them understood the project fully. At the end, a marketing manager on the project commented to the coach, “I wondered what you were doing to us; I now see it was key to have the hassle at the start if we were to achieve our objectives.” Things did go wrong on the project but, as all the core team members knew their own role and that of the others, changes could be more easily, speedily, and effectively implemented so that the overall objective was met. In fact the delivery time was reduced to an average of twenty minutes.
At its most basic, project support provides support and administrative services to the project manager on activities such as filing, planning, project monitoring, and control. The services provided by project support can, however be very specialist, and go far beyond mere, though essential, administration.
Project support
Specific responsibilities may include the following:
Project support can provide expertise, support services, specialist advice, and guidance on any aspect of project management. They are often given names such as project office, project management office, or project support office.
Working with the programme or project manager, project support establishes the most appropriate governance strategy and implements planning and control mechanisms, methods, processes, and tools. The provision of any support on a formal basis is optional and in some cases (where the project is relatively straight forward), the project manager provides their own support. Where set up as a specific service, project support can act as the focal point for lessons learned and as a central source of expertise and advice using any methods and specialist support tools.
All the above roles are related to directing and managing the project; they are agnostic to the type of work being undertaken. In fact, what people sometimes refer to as “the real work” is all directly undertaken by the team manager and team members; the work is whatever the scope of the work package defines it to be. Calling everyone a “team manager” on an organization chart is not very useful, so you will often see team manager’s roles defined by the specialist work they do, whether communications, sales, design, development, engineering, manufacturing, or whatever. The team manager and team members should be skilled and competent to undertake the work assigned to them, often using specialist processes or methods specifically for that work. For example, for a system engineering project, the team manager may be called the “System Engineer” or “System Architect” and they may follow the organization’s prescribed engineering method when developing the specialist deliverable for the project. As they are accountable for those deliverables in terms of quality, time and costs, they will also act as the “team manager”. As you have already read, above, the team manager role defines what management approach they should take and their interactions with other roles, such as the project manager and team members; a person managing a team on a project must be competent at both their specialism and the project management techniques needed for the management of their work package. Unfortunately, you often see people taking the opposite approach, saying, wrongly, that the project manager is accountable for time and cost and the specialist manager for the quality of the deliverable. Projects run in that way can rarely succeed. It is true that the project manager is accountable for time and cost but this is for the entire project; a project manager relies on the plans developed by the team managers and risks perceived by them, drawing everything together to ensure a complete solution with a robust plan.
This workout is best done with the project team, but may be done by the project manager or sponsor.
Look at the role descriptions described in the chapter again. Do the individuals have the knowledge, skills and competences to perform the roles? You should have only one name against project sponsor and one against project manager. If not, your roles and accountabilities are likely to be confused. Further, the sponsor and manager should not be the same person.
Project sponsor
Project board
Team managers
Team members