Radical Project Management

Rule 2: The Passive Conduit

This rule is really a corollary of Rule 1. One of the most common and serious mistakes that you can make as a project manager is to compensate for an inadequate sponsor role by making major project decisions such as scope, objectives, risk management, quality expectations, benefits realization plans, and so on by yourself.

As a project manager, your job is to take the sponsor's concept for his or her proj ect and, through participative project management processes, to define, refine, plan, and manage the development of the initial concept through to successful implementation and support.

The key is that although it is your responsibility to manage the realization of the concept, it is not your concept; it is your sponsor's. ...