What the sponsor decides and what the project manager runs

Every project has a sponsor, whether or not anyone uses the word. The sponsor is the person or organisation that wants the result, pays for it and will live with it afterwards. The project manager is the person who turns that intention into a programme, a budget, a set of contracts and, eventually, a finished thing.

Projects go wrong in a familiar way when those two roles blur. The sponsor starts directing contractors on site. The project manager starts making choices that are really the sponsor's to make. Each is trying to help, and the project ends up with two sets of instructions and nobody quite accountable for either.

The sponsor owns the decisions

The sponsor decides what the project is for and what it must deliver. The sponsor approves the scope, the budget and the programme. The sponsor chooses between the options the project manager presents, accepts or refuses changes, and accepts the finished work.

These decisions cannot be delegated to the project manager without changing whose project it is. A project manager who chooses the finishes, sets the budget or decides that a delay is acceptable has quietly become the sponsor, and is now making decisions without carrying their consequences.

The project manager owns the running of the work

The project manager plans the work, appoints and directs suppliers once the sponsor has approved them, tracks progress and cost, deals with problems as they arise and reports on all of it. The project manager decides how the work is done, in what order and by whom, within the scope and the budget the sponsor has set.

This is the part a sponsor should resist taking back. A sponsor who gives instructions directly to a contractor, however small, creates a second line of authority. The contractor will follow whichever instruction suits them, and the project manager can no longer answer for the result.

Name one person who decides for the sponsor

Sponsors are often organisations: a company, a family, a board. The project needs one named person who can decide on the organisation's behalf, and who has the authority to do so without going back to a committee for every question.

That person does not need to know everything about the project. They need to be available, to know the organisation's priorities and to have its confidence. If some decisions must go to a board or a family meeting, put those meetings in the programme so the project waits for them by design and not by surprise.

Give every decision a date

On a project that is otherwise well run, delay often starts with a decision that arrives late. A finish not chosen in time for ordering. A layout question left open while the contractor waits. A change approved after the work it affects has already been built.

The remedy is simple to describe and takes discipline to keep. The programme marks every point at which the sponsor must decide something, and each of those points has a date. The project manager prepares each decision in advance: the options, the cost and programme effect of each, and a recommendation. The sponsor decides by the date, or agrees a new date knowing what the delay will cost.

Report in a way that supports decisions

The project manager's report exists so the sponsor can decide. Each report should say what has been done, what it has cost against the budget, what is late and why, and what the project needs from the sponsor before the next report. That last item is the one that matters most, and it should never be buried.

A report that arrives on a fixed day in each cycle, in the same format every time, lets a sponsor read it in minutes and see at once whether anything has moved. A sponsor who finds they are reading reports and not deciding anything should ask whether the reports are telling them enough.

When each side keeps to its own role, every decision has an owner and every piece of work has someone answering for it.

Where we run a project, the sponsor makes the decisions and we run the project day to day.