The Project Sponsor is a representative of management of the project who is delegated to carry out control over the whole project, to assist in making sure that the project meets the requirements of both the customer and the company. The project sponsor is often defined as the project champion. The role of the project sponsor lies in the following charges:

• Initiation of the project through choosing a Project Manager;
• Ensuring that the purposes and tasks within a project correspond with the strategic course/aims of the company;
• Designation of the general course of the project;
• Ascertain that the project team members have in its disposition all the necessary resources for successful implementation of the project;
• Receiving obligations from the resource managers that they will maintain the project;
• Consideration and confirmation of the plan of the project;
• Consideration of status records;
• Consideration of the project achievements together with the Project Manager;
• Assisting in obviating obstructions which are impossible to remove by the Project manager or by the project team;
• Tutoring or training of the Project Manager;
• Consideration and confirmation of the concluding record;

One of the roles of the sponsor is to ensure that the Project Manager have in his disposition all the necessary resources, tutoring, communication maintenance, and task collaboration software which the Project Manager requires to execute his work within the project. The project sponsor is responsible for the successful activity of the Project Manager. What are the aftermaths of not having a sponsor? In this case your chief or even the customer of the project, if he is within the company, will act as the project sponsor. One of the functions of the sponsor is to coordinate the software project with the demands of administration. So, it is obviously hazardous to initiate a project without having a project sponsor.

In the next part, we will study in details the Project Customer Role.