Executive Sponsor

The role of Executive sponsor (sometimes called Project sponsor or Senior Responsible Owner) is a role in project management, usually the senior member of the project board and often the chair. The project sponsor will be a senior executive in a corporation (often at or just below board level) who is responsible to the business for the success of the project.

The sponsor has a number of interfaces and responsibilities for the project.

The responsibilities for which the sponsor is accountable to the board are:

• Provides leadership on culture and values
• Owns the business case
• Keeps project aligned with organisation's strategy and portfolio direction
• Governs project risk
• Works with other sponsors
• Focuses on realisation of benefits
• Recommends opportunities to optimise cost/benefits
• Ensures continuity of sponsorship
• Provides assurance
• Provides feedback and lessons learnt

The governance activities that take place between the sponsor and the project manager are:

• Provides timely decisions
• Clarifies decision making framework
• Clarifies business priorities and strategy
• Communicates business issues
• Provides resources
• Engenders trust
• Manages relationships
• Supports the project managers role
• Promotes ethical working

In addition to these activities the following activities take place between the sponsor and other stakeholders:

• Engages stakeholders
• Governs stakeholder communications
• Directs client relationships
• Directs governance of users
• Directs governance of suppliers
• Arbitrates between stakeholders

Due to the problem solving needs of the role the executive sponsor often needs to be able to exert pressure within the organisation to overcome resistance to the project. For this reason a successful executive sponsor will ideally be a person with five personal attributes - understanding, competence, credibility, commitment and engagement.

A few research studies have been published that not only detail the role of this individual within project management but also provide a way to ensure that the success of a project is greater increased if this individual plays a more active role.