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Sponsor Charter
Sponsor Responsibilities
The Sponsor is the most critical role on a project. The Sponsor for major projects must be an executive member.
Ideally the Sponsor will be the executive who will realise the greatest benefits from the project. Where this is not achievable, the Sponsor must be someone who is passionate about the project. In this context, the business line must have significant input into key decisions on major projects.
The Sponsor is responsible for the early involvement and the building of commitment amongst other stakeholders, particularly at the executive level. This responsibility for managing stakeholders is an ongoing priority for the Sponsor throughout the life of the project.
The Project Sponsor must develop a detailed understanding of the key elements of the Business Case.
The Sponsor should drive the sign-off process. The sign-off for projects should be done in an efficient manner, typically with all key stakeholders in the same meeting.
The Sponsor must play a key role in obtaining relevant level sign-offs.
The Sponsor must negotiate financial contributions from other Business Units, Group or other group subsidiaries where appropriate.
Sponsorship is an active role and therefore much more than a simple figurehead position. As such the Sponsor must be the chairman of the Steering Committee.
The Sponsor must be available, with minimum delay, to the project team, and must make all decisions on objectives and scope.
The active support of the Sponsor is needed during the middle stages of projects, where in the face a challenges, morale may fall away.
The Sponsor has end-to-end responsibility for the project. Importantly, this includes responsibility for the realisation of benefits.
A change of Sponsor on a major project needs to be managed very carefully.
Sponsors need to actively manage and encourage other stakeholders where they control some elements of the benefits.
The performance agreements of Sponsors should reflect their key role and be appropriately positioned to ensure that they are adequately rewarded for effective implementation or appropriate termination of projects.
Business Case Preparation
The business case is predominantly a project charter that forms the foundation of the ongoing management of the project. It is not simply a means of obtaining funding. Therefore, a business case is required for all projects, even when the justification is overwhelming. Business cases should be kept to the minimum size required to clearly articulate the reason, purpose and plan for the project. Unnecessarily large business cases often result in them not being read and therefore not clearly understood by key stakeholders.
Sponsors are strongly encouraged to use RAP (RApid Planning) sessions in developing business cases to ensure that key stakeholders participate in the design and share a common set of understanding for the project. Sponsors should lead the RAP sessions and ensure executive-level representation.
The RAP approach involves getting all stakeholders into the one meeting and then driving out the objectives, proposed solution, initial estimates for benefits/costs and risks etc.
The initial focus in the approval of business cases will be hard benefits such as sales increases and cost reductions.
Benefits Realisation
The benefits of a project can be broken into two related components - Output benefits and Outcome benefits.
The Sponsor must understand the relationship between the Project's Objectives, Outputs and Outcomes.
The Output benefits are the direct result of the project's deliverables being implemented. Output benefits are generalized realized by the project team.
Outcome benefits are the result of the output benefits being realized. They can only be realized by stakeholders and, it is the Sponsor's responsibility to realize the outcome benefits.
It is a critical responsibility of the Sponsor to ensure that the proposed benefits are tracked throughout the project development process as well as during the project support process.
Sponsor Bill of Rights
The Sponsor sets the broad vision for the project and, as the project is planned in detail, the Sponsor sets and controls the following critical project management factors:
Project success criteria;
¨ Objectives;
¨ Stakeholder satisfaction;
¨ Budget;
¨ Deadline;
¨ Added Value;
¨ Quality; and
¨ Team satisfaction.
Scope and Objectives;
Benefits/Cost Analysis, Monitoring and Reporting;
Risk Management Strategies;
Project Development Strategy;
Key Project Resourcing;
Project Reporting; and
Overall Project Governance
While the Project Manager is the person who manages the detailed planning and execution of the project plan, the Sponsor must not delegate control of these factors to the Project Manager.
Any change to these factors must be reviewed and approved by the Sponsor before the Project Manager changes the project.
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