Improving Executive Sponsorship of Projects: A Holistic Approach

This book addresses gaps in current project management literature. From a senior management perspective, the gap is the lack of resources explaining why and how to establish a program to improve executive sponsorship strategically across an organization. From a tactical perspective, the gap is a scarcity of actionable materials to clarify roles, responsibilities, expected behaviors, and identify support necessary for improving sponsor effectiveness. Improving Executive Sponsorship of Projects identifies key factors to consider before creating an executive sponsorship improvement program or enhancing an existing one. The authors explain why executive sponsorship is important to an organization, how an organization's culture influences the effectiveness of the sponsor role, and why project management standards are critical to success. The book explores what roles, responsibilities, and behavior should be considered and how to determine whether the person in the sponsor role is the right person and prepared to do the job. Finally, it provides a process and tools to assess an organization's readiness to implement an executive sponsorship program, develop a plan for improvement, and monitor the progress of a program once it has begun.

Dawne Chandler, PhD, PMP(R) is a management consultant with 35+ years of blended academic and corporate experience. For 17 years, she held various executive positions in project management, sales/marketing, strategic planning, international business and product development, process re-engineering, as well as heading an electronic services start-up. Dawne spent 18 years at IBM in various technical, sales, consulting, and management positions.

Payson Hall, PMP(R) is a consulting project manager with Catalysis Group, Inc. Formally trained as a software engineer, his early career included both commercial software development and systems integration. Today he coaches project managers and sponsoring executives, develops and teaches project management courses, and consults and performs project reviews and independent project oversight for large information technology projects.