The project sponsor

The project sponsor is a key role in every project. The sponsor represents the interests of the project investors and supports the project manager to fulfil his day-to-day role. The project manager manages the day-to-day work on the project.

The project sponsor’s role is to:

• Identify the business need for a project, and act as an evangelist for the project.
• Provide senior support to a project during execution:
  • accessing resources
  • overcoming problems
  • decision making – e.g. approving baseline plans, budgets and changes
  • communicating about the project
  • retaining enthusiasm and support for the project within the business. Project managers are dependent on the sponsor’s power, authority and influencing skills.
• Set the business context for a project, the project manager and the project team, answering questions like: why is the project important, and how does it fit into the organisation’s strategy?
• Ensure that the project manager is managing the project in a competent fashion.
• Take accountability for delivery of business benefits, which may accrue after the project is completed and the project manager has finished her work.

A project sponsor must be of sufficient seniority to support a project of the scale required, and must have enough time available to sponsor the project. Sponsorship is rarely a full-time role. It may only require a few hours a week, but it is a real task and needs active involvement. A project sponsor should:

• Have familiarity with project management concepts and terminology.
• Recognise the relationship between sponsor behaviour and project success.
• Have the ability to probe and question successfully, often forming a picture by taking information from multiple sources.
• Be willing to spend sufficient time understanding the project status.

The project manager

The second key role in a project is the project manager. The project manager has responsibility for delivering all the components of a project. This may or may not be a full-time job, and the work required varies from project to project. Normally, the project manager is responsible for:

• Scoping out the work to ensure there is a clear understanding of why a project is being done, and what it will produce.
• Planning the project and determining what resources are required, how long it will take and how much it will cost.
• Getting the necessary resources allocated and ensuring every project team member knows what they are responsible for.
• Controlling the project and ensuring that it achieves its objectives within the planned time and cost.
• Completing the project properly to make sure everything produced by the project is of the quality expected and works as required.
• Ensuring problems or issues that may cause the completion of tasks to be delayed or stopped are resolved.

Project management is largely a generic approach, but that does not mean all project managers can manage all projects. To manage a specific project, a project manager needs to make use of:

• Project management knowledge and experience, suitable to a project of this type and scale. This includes a capability to:
  • pull objectives and scope together in a situation of ambiguity
  • develop a project business case
  • plan and resource the project
  • monitor and report on project progress
  • drive project progress
  • manage issues, risks, assumptions and changes through the project
  • complete the project and hand over deliverables to in-life owners (the operational managers who have to live and work with your project's deliverables once the project is complete).
  • ensure the groundwork for the delivery of benefits.
• Context-specific knowledge, both of project and type of organisation. This includes:
  • an ability to use the language, terminology and concepts relevant to the situation.
  • an understanding of culture, implicit rules, expectations and assumptions of a business.
  • skills and knowledge specific to an industry or area of application.
• Personal capabilities, including:
  • a feeling of ownership for and involvement in the project.
  • a dynamic and positive style of working.
  • being results-orientated and having a completer–finisher mentality.
  • the ability to handle stress.
  • the ability to achieve clarity when there is uncertainty and ambiguity.
  • being comfortable with multi-tasking.
  • the ability to make reliable judgements.
  • sufficient creativity to overcome issues and problems.
  • empathy with the project’s customer and stakeholders.
  • good networking skills.
  • political sensitivity and sensitivity to the environment.
  • adapting style to the situation.
  • a sense of humour is also a great asset!
• General management and leadership skills appropriate to the size and seniority of the project management team. Managing a project team has challenges that are specific to projects, but many of the skills are those generic to any management role, such as team motivation. The leadership role depends on what role the sponsor takes. An active sponsor may fulfil the leadership role in a project, but one who spends little time on the project will not.

Choosing a project strategy and life cycle

Each project is unique and there will be several ways to deliver it. Some approaches will be better than others. It is important to choose an effective and efficient approach to the project.

The project strategy defines the overall approach that will be used to reach the project’s goals. The project life cycle is the series of steps the project will go through to achieve those goals. To determine the project strategy and life cycle:

1. Don’t jump to conclusions too quickly. You must choose a strategy and life cycle, but don’t just use what you already know. It needs to vary to suit the project. Try to determine whether this strategy and life cycle contribute to the success or failure of the project.
2. If you are unclear about project strategy and project life cycle options, do some research. Talk to experienced project managers. How would they face the challenge of a similar project?
3. Determine the project strategy. How, in broad terms, will you approach meeting the project’s objectives and achieving the associated success criteria?
4. Answer the following questions, and any other related questions you can think of:
   • Do you understand the problem your project is trying to overcome? If not, the project must include a phase for problem definition.
   • Do you understand the solution your project will implement? If not, the project requires phases associated with exploring and selecting the most appropriate solution.
   • Will there be a need to design a solution, or will it be about choosing an off-the-shelf option? If the former is preferable, you need a solutions design phase; if the latter is more suitable you may need a tendering and supplier selection stage.
   • Will you do the work yourself or will you use a third party? If using a third party you may need a tendering, supplier selection and contracting phase. Also, you must understand the split in management responsibilities between yourself and your supplier(s).
   • Do you think it is best to complete the work in one set of sequential steps, or will there be a need to iterate between steps several times? This is related to how much change you expect as the project progresses, and the level of certainty possible at the start of the project.
   • What is the most important constraint – time, cost or quality?
5. Choose an appropriate life cycle. What life cycle is most suited to achieving this?
   • What is the nature of the project and the environment it runs in, e.g. is it an IT project in a bank, a business change project in an oil company, or a construction project in a water company?
   • What is the scale, complexity, degree of novelty and risk associated with the project?
   • Is there a standard project life cycle in this business that has to be used?
   • What life cycles and approaches have been used in the past?
   • Were these effective, and can they be improved?
   • Do you want to focus your plan on the steps you will take or the deliverables you will create?
6. Review the strategy and life cycle with the project sponsor and, if possible, an experienced project manager who can provide expert support.

Creating plans using work breakdown structures

A project plan is essential. It:

• Provides an understanding of the activities involved in a project.
• Enables you to understand how long a project will take, what resources will be required and how much it will cost to do.
• Facilitates communicating and explaining the project to project stakeholders and project team members.
• Allows you to allocate work to different people in the project.
• Is the basis for managing your project to successful completion.
• Supports wider business planning and management commitment-making.

There are several ways to create a project plan. A project manager can use one or more of:

• Top-down identification of main chunks, followed by decomposition into constituent parts.
• Group effort/workshops to brainstorm the possible activities, followed by arranging the activities into appropriate chunks and a logical sequence.
• Adaptation of previous plans from similar projects.
• Asking an expert in the area of the project for advice.

Developing a project plan usually starts with the creation of a work breakdown structure or WBS. The WBS is a structured hierarchy that provides a way the tasks in a project plan can be organised. The WBS helps in managing the project, communicating about the project, and identifying gaps and overlaps in the project. There are many WBS options, and the choice of WBS is important.

The way to develop a work breakdown structure is to:

1. Determine the basis for the work breakdown structure. What is the most sensible way to group the activities in the project? There are different ways, based on the deliverables from the project, the activities in the project, or the process or life cycle that the project uses.
2. Divide the overall project into its component tasks. One way to do this is to brainstorm a task list, and then arrange the tasks into the WBS. This will probably take several attempts.
3. Continue to divide the component tasks into smaller tasks until you have a comprehensive list of things that must be done to complete the project. The point at which you have gone far enough is when:
   • It is enough for you to be able to manage the work.
   • The detail is sufficient for you to estimate and schedule the project.
   • The tasks are small enough to be allocated to individuals in the team or individual sub-teams within the project team.
4. Review and check the WBS is complete and comprehensive. There should be no gaps or overlaps. Tasks should appear only once in the WBS.
   
   The steps in developing a plan using a WBS are:
    
5. Select a basis for decomposing a plan (deliverables, along a process, etc.).
6. Define the activities in the WBS.
7. Identify linkages between activities.
8. Estimate duration and resources required for each activity (see page 89), by:
   • asking someone who does know or has previous experience of something similar
   • using any available rules of thumb
   • modelling it against other similar tasks
   • breaking down the task further until you get tasks you can estimate
   • making an assumption but keeping track of it.
9. Review the resources available and the schedule of availability. (See pages 89–97.)
10. Schedule the activities, taking into consideration the linkages, duration and resource availability. This can be done automatically with planning software such as MS Project or Primavera.
11. Add appropriate milestones.
12. Review the plan against objectives and constraints and ensure it is consistent with them. If it is not, revisit the plan and adapt it until it conforms to objectives and constraints. This includes consideration of time, cost and quality constraints and critical success factors.

The alternative is backwards planning. Normal planning is called forward planning – starting from today, you plan the tasks the project requires and work out the end date. With backwards planning you start with the end date and work backwards, making whatever compromises are required to ensure that the plan can be completed by the chosen end date.

Estimating project times and costs

A plan shows how long the project will take and how much it will cost. This information is useful for budgeting for projects, for managing projects in life, and to support making business commitments. Estimation is often the hardest part of developing a project plan.

There are several ways to develop estimates (time and costs) for projects:

• Top-down and comparative estimates: a summary estimate for the whole project. This is normally based on the assessment of an experienced practitioner who can make comparisons to similar projects.
• Bottom-up: using the WBS and estimating the resources required for each activity in the WBS, and then totalling across the project.
• Expert input: support and advice from an expert in one or more areas of the project.
• Parametric: using a sizing algorithm or heuristic for a type of work. Such algorithms exist for IT, construction and many engineering projects.
• Risk-based: there are different ways of including a consideration of risk in project estimates, e.g. PERT.

The most common way is a bottom-up estimate, which is then compared to a common-sense judgement from a top-down basis. To perform a bottom-up estimate:

• Complete the work breakdown structure (see page 86).
• For each task in the WBS, estimate its duration and resources required. (See page 90 for more information on costs.)
• If you cannot estimate, you must:
  • break the task down into further levels of detail until you can estimate; or
  • ask someone who does know; or
  • make an assumption. This is usually necessary for parts of the plan, but each assumption increases the risk of the project.
• Having made all the estimates, add in contingency to take account for the level of risk. The risk is associated with how much is uncertain about the project. The more unknowns or novelty, the greater the percentage of contingency required. Contingency should be included within your estimates for time and cost. Uncertainty is not just about the risk of error for each task in the WBS, but also the risk that the WBS has omissions. The smaller the amount of contingency there is, the more likely the project is to overrun and the more precise management control is required.

It is important to be able to cost a project so that appropriate authorisation can be gained, a budget can be provided, and expectations set as to how much the project will cost. (See also page 235.) There are four types of costs associated with a project:

1. Costs associated with doing the work on the project, which can be derived from the project plans, e.g.:
   • Human resource costs – people’s time working on the project. This is both internal resources (if time is tracked and costed back to a budget), and external resource charges. You need to consider how people’s time is charged (by hour/day/week), the cost per unit, and how many units will be used.
   • Things you have to buy or rent to do the project. For example, you may rent a room for the project team to work in, and may buy some project management software to help run the project.
   • Consumables used on the project, e.g. stationery.
2. Costs associated with things you must buy to create the deliverables. These costs can be determined from the design documents and include:
   • capital investments; and
   • materials used in the production of deliverables.
3. Costs associated with running the deliverables after the project is complete (e.g. maintenance costs) or dealing with the impact of the project (e.g. redundancy or recruitment costs). Normally, these are not costs a project has to budget for, but are paid for out of departmental or operational budgets. However, a project may be expected to pay for the operation of deliverables for some period after completion, e.g. the first year after implementation.
4. Overhead costs in a business that will be reallocated. Some businesses reallocate some overhead costs to projects, e.g. for facilities. A project manager must be aware of this to take account of it in the project budget. Talk to your finance department.

The project manager must develop a budget which shows the amount of money required and the rate of spend. The budget must take account of the various accounting treatments of different categories of spend.

Identifying the skills, roles and organisation required

The work on a project is done by the project team. Building a project team starts by developing an understanding of the skills and roles required.

1. Review the work breakdown structure. What types of tasks are there, and therefore what skills and capabilities are needed?
2. Review the overall project plan. What volume of these skills is needed?
   • How many people with each skill set do you need? How long will you need them for?
   • Are you likely to find anyone who is cross-skilled and could fulfil multiple roles on the project?
3. Once you have some idea of the people you need to complete the project, you will need to define how they will be organised for the project. There is no right or wrong answer, but the factors you need to consider are:
   • Size of project – the larger the project, the more you will need a formal structured organisation with clear roles and management levels.
   • Stage of a project – the organisation may adapt as the project progresses. A project in a feasibility stage, during implementation, or during post-implementation support may have different needs.
   • Complexity of the work – is everyone doing very similar tasks or is there a large variation?
   • Type of staffing – are they dedicated or part-time? Are they junior technicians or senior specialists like lawyers? Each need to be managed in different ways.
   • Third-party involvement – are you outsourcing some or all of the project work?
   • Relationship to end-users – are you working with end-users during the project, or are you separate from them and will hand over once the project is complete?
     Common examples of project organisational structures you may use are:
   • Based on the functions in the project team – e.g. engineering, marketing, legal and project management.
   • Based on the deliverables to be created – e.g. IT system, business process, organisational units.
   • Based on stakeholder organisation – e.g. reflecting the structure of the organisation the project is being run in.
   • Based on geography – e.g. North team and South team.
   • Based around the phases if it is a multi-stage project – e.g. phase 1 team, phase 2 team, etc.
   • Based around the structure of the project plan. This is usually the best way to organise a project team, as it makes allocating work to teams easiest, and ongoing project management more straightforward.
4. For larger projects with many people working on them organised into separate sub-teams of the overall project team (see also Chapter 11):
   • Determine if the sub-teams need team leaders to interface to the project manager. Usually they will.
   • Determine if each sub-team needs its own project managers.
   • Agree how the individual sub-teams will be allocated work and will report progress to the overall project manager.

Choosing the project team

There is a big difference between knowing what sort of people you want and choosing your project team – knowing you need an engineer with a certain skill-set is different from having person x, who has the ideal skills and attitudes, allocated to the team.

1. Start by applying the following principles to team selection:
   • Be willing to adapt your project team structure to the reality of the human resources available.
   • Fewer of the right people are much better than more of the wrong. Quality wins out over quantity when it comes to team selection.
   • Don’t think that the resolution to every problem is to add more resource. Adding resource reduces the workload on others on the project and may make tasks possible that otherwise are not – but each additional resource increases management complexity. There comes a point at which adding more resource reduces, rather than increases, efficiency and effectiveness.
   • It is better to have fewer more highly motivated people than more unmotivated people.
   • Try to get resourcing levels right at the start. You may be able to add resources later, but this may cause more disruption than benefit.
2. Work closely with resource owners (generally line managers) to get the necessary people allocated to the project. Be prepared to negotiate.
3. Where line managers cannot provide the resources you need, look to external sources – but you have to have the budget to cover the associated costs.
4. Review your staffing options. If you have no choice, then you will have to work with the people offered. If you have choices, start to select the best people you can. ‘Best’ in this context is a balance of factors:
   • Are they available for the duration of the project?
   • Are they available 100 per cent of their time or not? If not, will they have to multi-task on this project and other activities they have to do? If so, is this reasonable and manageable? Talk to the individuals, not just their managers. You want to understand real availability, not theoretical.
   • Are they the right people to do the individual tasks that will be allocated to them, considering skills, competency, attitude and motivation?
   • Do they have effective styles of interaction and communication?
   • Will they work productively as part of a team? Consider cultural fit, effect on other team members and team skills.
   • Can you afford them?
5. Update your theoretical project team structure (from page 92) to what you really have.
6. Aggregate resource usage across the plan to understand your points of overload and underload. Focus on the resources that are continuously overloaded as this is the key risk area. The information on over- and underloaded resource is used to re-plan and reschedule.
7. Reiterate the plan, taking account of the actual resources available, which may be different from your original request. You may reiterate between planning and resourcing several times.

Some tips on managing the team:

• A team is not simply a collection of individuals, but is a dynamic unit of competencies, attitudes and relationships. A bad team is less productive than the individuals will be separately. A good team will be several times as productive.
• Building a team and making it fully productive takes time and willingness for the team members to interact productively.
• Sometimes there will be disagreement or conflict. This is not always bad. Conflict can generate brilliant thinking, clear the air and resolve issues. But it needs to be controlled, as it can become destructive.
• Watch out for groupthink, where the team becomes so aligned that everyone sees everything the same way. A strong team has diversity of views and encourages open debate between team members.
• A team needs to be led. This is part of the central role of the project manager. A project manager who cannot lead the project team will not be effective. This requires power and influence over the team members. The project manager should:
  • assign work
  • monitor progress and performance
  • watch behaviour and take appropriate action
  • identify and resolve team problems
  • consult team members for advice – but make her own decisions
  • give and receive feedback
  • modify leadership style to that needed for different team members.

Other project resources

Projects may consume a variety of other resources which have to be factored into plans and budgets. The project manager should:

1. Determine what other project resources you need, considering:
   • equipment
   • facilities
   • consumables
   • services.
2. Determine if you have to pay for any of these other resources.
3. Determine if you have the budget to cover the costs. If not, look for alternatives, or discuss with your sponsor if there is a way to increase the budget.
4. Identify where you get the resources from/order them through/who you can book them through.
5. Determine the lead times for delivery/availability/booking and ensure these times are factored into the project plan.
6. For any critical equipment, facilities or consumables for which you are uncertain, determine what you will do if it does not arrive or become available.

Creating a communications plan

Communication is central to the project manager’s role. Communication should be planned and executed in a structured way. Informal dialogue should be encouraged, but it should be consistent with the messages that need to be communicated.

Communication is important because:

• it is the basis of managing people’s expectations.
• it helps the project team to determine if they are doing the right things.
• it facilitates the occurrence of necessary changes.
• it enables the project manager to collect feedback on the project. This is essential for progress monitoring as well as issue and risk management.
• it can keep support for the project going, and is essential for good change management.

The approach to communications has to be structured according to the scale and sensitivity of the project. For a large programme of work, it is essential to develop a communications plan that runs alongside the main project plan. The steps to do this are:

1. Allocate responsibility for communications. Normally, this is part of the project manager’s role, but in complex situations it may be allocated to one of the project team members or to a dedicated communication manager.
2. Develop key messages. What are the main overall messages about the project?
3. Identify target stakeholders. Who needs to be communicated to about this project?
4. Identify the key events on the project plan. These are events that stakeholders need to be aware of or prepared for. What needs to be explained and when?
5. Build a communications activity list. This is formed by cross-referencing key events to the target stakeholders. For each event/stakeholder combination, determine what actions need to be undertaken to communicate, and when.
6. Determine media. What is the best format for these communication activities? It may be that one-to-one conversations are required: a presentation, team meetings, mass emails, company magazine articles, etc. Generally, the more tailored to the individual the more effective the communication, but the more work it is to do.
7. Determine timings. When should the messages be delivered for most impact? How many times should they be repeated?
8. Allocate responsibility. Who will create which communications materials, and who will present them?
9. Start working to the communication plan.
10. Review and amend the communication plan as the project progresses. The plan needs to be dynamic. Not all communications will be effective and some will result in unexpected outcomes. You must be prepared to handle this.

Don’t underestimate the importance of communication. It is central to many projects and essential for achieving sustained change. But don’t overestimate communications. It is not the same as delivering the project. Communications will not save a flawed project, but flawed communications can doom a project.

Mobilising a project team and running a kick-off meeting

Mobilisation is the responsibility of the project manager. The objectives of mobilisation are:

• To energise and align the project team. If it is a large project team this may take some considerable effort.
• To ensure the broader stakeholder community is supportive of the project and ready for it.
• To ensure project team members understand the objectives of their involvement, the work that has been allocated to them, and how they fit within the overall plan.

Once this is done, project delivery can commence. To mobilise the project team you should:

1. Brief line managers providing resource to the project as to when resource will be required. Set expectations that project plans are not exact and these timescales may change.
2. Ensure that every member of the project team knows:
   • Their role in the project and what tasks they are responsible for doing.
   • How their task fits into the overall project.
   • What to do when they have completed initial work (i.e. what they should do next).
   • Their responsibilities with regard to project management processes – especially those associated with progress reporting, issue and risk management and change control.
   • The level of input expected. This includes clarifying whether they are part-time or full-time, and what happens to their normal workload.
3. Deal with any of the project team’s concerns.
4. Ensure that the project team is motivated, ready to start work, and has the supporting materials, equipment or facilities they need.
5. Brief the project sponsor so he is aligned with the project and ready to provide the support and direction required.
6. Ensure that key customers and stakeholders are prepared for the start of the project and ready to provide any support required to the project. The key customers must know when this support will be needed.
7. Brief anyone else whose actions or support are important to the project’s success.
8. Check that the project is approved, budget allocated and prioritised as part of the organisation’s portfolio of projects.
9. Set up any project infrastructure required, such as an online document library, time reporting systems, templates and documents.
10. Run a project kick-off session with the whole project team to set expectations and make sure everyone is starting out in the right direction.

The kick-off session is the responsibility of the project manager. A typical agenda for a kick-off session, which should be tailored to your situation, is:

1. Introduction to the project by the project sponsor, explaining the business context and importance of the project.
2. Team-building exercise 1 – for project team members to start to get to know each other. Something energising and quick.
3. Presentation by project customers on how the project will improve their work.
4. Team-building exercise 2 – something fun to break up the monotony of presentations.
5. Project manager presents the plan and initiates discussion on whether this is the right plan for this project.
6. Project manager describes the objectives, scope and success criteria for the project.
7. Break the group into teams of 4–8 people for workshop sessions. The workshops are used to explore:
   • Project plan – each group may review specific segments of the overall plan.
   • Risks that can be identified.
   • Issues the group identify
   • Any ways the project can be improved.
8. Brief feedback from workshop sessions to the whole group.
9. Presentation by the project manager or project office manager to introduce expected working processes, document templates, etc. This should be a short session. It is not a training course, but should overview what is required and how to find more information.
10. Question and answer session. Questions to be answered by the project manager, project sponsor and key customer representatives.
11. Finish with a motivation talk, covering the key points noted below.

Such a session should be designed to be interactive and fun.

There are a number of key messages to get across in the kick-off session. Many of these will be specific to the project, and should be based on the communications plan. The following points should be reinforced during the kick-off in all projects:

• The project is important.
• The project will only be successful with the project team’s hard work.
• The working and team style required to make the project work.
• Expectations as to the likely response to the project team’s work.
  • Will the rest of the organisation generally be in favour of or against this project?
  • How should the project team members respond to any unsupportive challenge?
• The project plan provides the framework everyone works to and is measured against.
• Each project team member is responsible for the tasks allocated to them.
• The plan will change in some ways as the project progresses, and at times it may feel more chaotic than the project team members expect. Each project is unique, so there will be some unexpected occurrences.
• Projects rely on information and regular updates on progress, issues, risks, changes and so on. It is everyone’s responsibility to keep the project manager informed. This is not an administrative overhead, but an important part of good management.