The Responsibilities of the Project Sponsor

A project sponsor is typically responsible for initiating, ensuring, approving, and establishing a series of key aspects in relation to the project, which can be summed up under categories of vision, governance, and value/benefits realization. Note that the categories are not mutually exclusive and most of the items can appear under more than one category

The Role of the Sponsor in Project Success

The project sponsor is an individual (often a manager or executive) with overall accountability for the project. He or she is primarily concerned with ensuring that the project delivers the agreed upon business benefits and acts as the representative of the organization, playing a vital leadership role through a series of areas:

• Provides business context, expertise, and guidance to the project manager and the team;
• Champions the project, including “selling” and marketing it throughout the organization to ensure capacity, funding, and priority for the project;
• Acts as an escalation point for decisions and issues that are beyond the authority of the project manager;
• Acts as an additional line of communication and observation with team members, customers, and other stakeholders;
• Acts as the link between the project, the business community, and strategic level decision-making groups.