7 Steps to Strength Your Bond with Your Sponsor

7 Steps to Strength your Bond with your Sponsor

1. Communicate regularly:

Communication and transparency are two important things required in any project. I will first make a checklist of expectations required to be fulfilled by the sponsor as well as the project manager. Both of them need to have an effective question-response communication to understand each and every phase of the project. What are we currently doing? Where are we at this stage? What are the problems/issues? What help/assistance is required?

All these general questions are required to answer during every week and not on a monthly basis. The sponsor should be as active as the project manager to avoid any end moment hassle and to deliver the project in time.

2. Build Personal relationships:

Apart from the weekly and monthly review meetings. I will also try to communicate with Jason Li, the IT infrastructure Head on a personal upfront, while communicating on calls and emails by asking about the weather in Canada? How’s the culture? Which festivals are celebrated over there?

Social media is the best way to know about their personal interest, hobbies, and mutual friends. Through LinkedIn and Facebook, I will get to know him well, which can help me bond in a better way. Through a friendly nature, we will be more approachable and can understand each other’s issues and concerns. The awkwardness and fear about asking basic doubts and assistance will thereby fade away in project building.

3. Build the Team together:

It is essential for a project manager and a sponsor to plan the resources accordingly to build an effective team. However the team that started the project together won’t be necessarily working till the end due to unavoidable circumstances. I will make sure that the resources who are or will be working throughout the project are linked to each other and communicate effectively and a proper handover is given in case if the project managers or the project sponsors resigns from their respective companies. A proper introduction to each other on call or video call, checklist of the tasks completed or to be done, in-scope and out of scope services to be provided by the internal or the external party, additional charges for extra services or in case of delayed payments to be done should be discussed in order to avoid any conflicts in future.

4. Minutes of Meeting(MOM):

Meetings are conducted on a weekly or monthly basis and most of the services or tasks are discussed on call. But later on, it may happen that either of them might forget or deny the services as promised, to avoid this it is always essential to record each and every meeting and prepare minutes of meeting document stating the tasks/issues discussed by each team member. This will keep everyone informed about the points discussed in meeting which can be then be followed up by the project manager.

5. Follow-up on requests/updates/issues:

It is essential for the project manager to follow up with the sponsor on the phases of the project. For example, after completion of a customized program module, the project manager should test it and then ask the sponsor for his reviews and also check if it meets the standards/requirements