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?

Talking to Sponsors

A common question asked of a consultant is 'what do other organisations do?'. The accurate answer - 'it all depends...' - isn't enough. It's useful to have a framework for helping the client organisation to understand why context is so important. It also helps your engagement with the organisation by helping to surface strategic implementation concerns.
Putting the question in terms of Critical Success Factors catches the attention and starts the conversation about what do we have to do to be successful. Over the next few posts, we're going to have a look at a number of CSFs. In particular at:
- Methodology and Processes
- Project Management Expertise
- Technology Infrastructure
- Cultural Change Management
- Executive Support
It's important to understand that this list is not a menu (pick any two). They are all required to some extent. The extent will vary from organisation to organisation and depends on the level of maturity, the volume of project management activity, the goals of management, the degree of centralisation of the organisation and a host of other factors.