Abstract
Over the past decade, research conducted for the benefit of IT project
management has pointed to numerous factors that contribute to
organisational project success. Support from executives and top management
is often cited as an imperative factor, whilst having clear business objectives
for conducting projects follows closely behind.
The linchpin between the executive leadership team and project managers is
the project sponsor, who is in a position to directly contribute to the two
aforementioned project success factors.
The precise responsibilities of the sponsor, however, remain relatively poorly
defined. As a result, it is important to focus on this very important role and
provide those who are in this position with a set of activities that would
facilitate greater project success.
Further to this, the corporate governance scandals of the past few years and
the consequent publication of relevant acts of legislation and governance
standards has forced top management to become more interested in the
conduct of their organisation’s portfolio of projects.
This research study therefore addresses both the formal and informal aspects
of the role of the project sponsor and has provided guidance to organisations
and professional associations in defining the role and responsibilities of the
project sponsor within a corporate governance framework.
The first goal was therefore to establish a holistic corporate governance
framework that encompasses the roles of IT and project management in the
organisation. By doing so, executives are given a road map that aligns all IT
projects with organisational strategy and a means to facilitate greater internal
control over all IT project-related activities.
This was developed by identifying the relevance and implications that recent
corporate scandals around the world have had on IT and project management
in general. This then led to combining COBIT (which is an IT governance
Abstract
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framework) and a new project governance framework (known as the PG
framework) to form a corporate governance framework.
This is followed by the development of a generic project sponsorship
competency framework that provides organisations with a benchmark that
assesses whether an individual is appropriately suited for the role of
sponsoring an IT project.
Both frameworks provide a means to facilitate better strategic alignment and
internal control of all IT project-related activities, and thus contribute to the
improvement of IT project management capability within the organisation.
Prof. L. Labuschagne