eCameron took a serious look at project sponsorship by conducting a series on non-scientific interviews. Initially the focus was the healthcare industry. As patterns started to emerge, however, others outside of that industry expressed serious interest. To address that interest and better understand the larger issue we expanded the interviews to outside healthcare. Candid and confidential interviews were conducted with project related personnel including executives, sponsors, project managers, and Project Management Office (PMO) managers. In summary:

• Sponsorship is an issue in all business domains.
• Good sponsorship is an essential component in creating successful projects.
• Many issues are pervasive across industries.
• Sponsors need to work with project managers to design a successful project outcome.
• Sponsor roles are neither properly defined nor supported.

This white paper presents the results of the research and highlights areas where organizations need to improve to change their project success rates.