Executive Support

Continuing the series of posts on Critical Success Factors, we get to Executive Support. This topic is easy to understand. It's also easy for people charged with establishing a PMO to blame lack of executive support for problems they encounter. The fact is that the kind of executive you would want as a sponsor is high enough in the organisation that they will be too busy to give detailed support. So it is essential to have a common description of the relative roles of the change management team and the executive sponsor.

Some commonly quoted expectations for executive support are:
- Visible enthusiasm within the organisation for Project Management philosophy
- Advocacy between organisational groups
- Creation of, or active support for, a vision for the organisation with engrained project management processes
- Removal of barriers to change
- Assurance of funding for the implementation and continued operation of the PMO
- Enthusiasm for the use of project management information and involvement in the processes

It's important that the support should be actionable at a working level. For instance, providing some high level design principles but not insisting on detailed design approval. Or, issuing a public announcement which would then be followed up by detailed posts about specific topics from the team.

This paper describes a sponsor's role in developing project management maturity.
The Executive Sponsor - the Hinge upon which Organisational Project Management Maturity Turns?