Project champion
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:
The governance activities that take place between the sponsor and the project manager are:
In addition to these activities the following activities take place between the sponsor and other Project stakeholders:
Due to the problem-solving needs of the role the executive sponsor often needs to be able to exert pressure within the organization 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 increased if this individual plays a more active role.
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