Sponsor SRO briefing
Advanced level – the Sponsor SRO briefing is intended for small groups up to 8 participants, to be at an executive level of Sponsor or Senior Responsible Owner level.
Individuals who benefit most from this seminar are managers who are:
• Involved in making change happen in the business
• Responsible for the business benefits realisation
• Responsible for the successful management and delivery of portfolios, programmes or major projects.
Projects are successful when they deliver business benefits. Project managers tend to focus their effort and attention on delivering ‘things’ such as buildings, processes or new systems. To convert these project deliverables into project benefits requires an effective partnership between the project manager and the sponsor.
The purpose of the seminar is to explore the role of a sponsor: the responsibilities, the appropriate attitudes and successful behaviours – how to get the best out of project managers.
Beyond Method is learning constructed using our own best practice created from our inception as a specialist university institute in 1983; fusing the expertise of Cranfield University with the interests of six major users of change management: British Aerospace, British Gas, British Petroleum, British Telecom, Cable & Wireless and Longman.
A significant amount of research and investment was made into Cranfield Information Technology Institute (shortened to CITI in 1988) to take change professionals beyond methodologies – and learn how to successfully implement change!
Syllabus
Sponsors are responsible for ensuring that factors critical to the success of the project – alignment with business strategy, effective implementation of the outputs from the project and their adoption by the business, and the achievement of benefit – are managed appropriately. Some of these factors are under the control of the project manager; others are dependent upon the behaviours of other business managers. The seminar provides techniques for the sponsor to discharge their responsibilities: how to determine the critical success factors, diagnosing projects in trouble, and establishing effective governance over a project – setting up steering groups that really do steer projects.
Sponsor seminars are most effective when tailored to the specific project environment of the organisation. The examples used are immediately familiar, the issues and concerns are described in a vocabulary familiar to the participants, and the governance processes and procedures do not have to be translated into those actually in use.
Through pre-workshop interviews we identify the specific issues, ‘hot’ projects, management style and vocabulary of the sponsor community. The sponsor briefing is then built up into a mixture of short lectures, facilitated discussions and a series of interactive sessions in which the group acts as a steering group, directing and shaping the progress of a project. Wherever possible using examples from the business, the participants are put into situations which allow them to ‘try out’ solutions and then review how successful that approach would be.
At the end of the briefing, each participant is provided with a pocket guide to project sponsorship. This has been found by many to be a useful aide memoir, reminding them of the questions that need answers at particular points in a project.
Find out more about our Sponsor SRO briefings
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