The Handbook of Project Management, 6th Edition

Chapter 25 The project sponsor

Lynn Crawford

DOI: 10.4324/9781003274179-29

Introduction

The sponsor is central to the governance and success of projects (Breese et al., 2020; Franke et al., 2022) but this is rarely their full-time or primary role. They may be the project owner but are most often an executive or senior managers with an interest in the results of the project and sufficient decision-making authority to represent the project owner. As a sponsor, they are expected to take responsibility for shaping, overseeing and advocating for the project and are ultimately accountable for realizing value and benefits from the investment (APM, 2019; GAPPS, 2015). This requires a certain level of authority and seniority and such people will usually ...