Artful Argument Launch: Poor project sponsorship is a greater threat than poor project management

On Thursday 22 February 2024, the Artful Argument series was relaunched for the year with the first session centred around discussing the prompt that ‘Poor project sponsorship is a greater threat than poor project management’. The series consists of casual monthly dinner gatherings where groups of project management experts get together to workshop issues relating to the field centred around a preselected topic for each session.

Opening the conversation was Mark Heath, the Managing Director of UniPhi, who delivered his establishing argument by defining the responsibilities of a project sponsor and explaining why he believed they were more impactful to a project.

The attendees then split up into different groups to discuss the prompt. Those agreeing with the argument cited research and examples where poor or absent project sponsorship led to failure. One of the arguments raised against the prompt was that project managers were more impactful so long as the organisation still capitalised off of the deliverables garnered by them.

At the end, the group reconvened and the general consensus arrived at was that sponsors definitely played an important role in a project’s success and that there was a need in the industry for project sponsors to step up.

The Artful Argument series is organised by Elemental Projects and the John Grill Institute for Project Leadership is a proud sponsor of this initiative.