ABSTRACT
This chapter is an account of the people who provide the capital or other resources for a project with the expectation of financial gain and/or other reward for their organization. It also deals with the motivations, expectations and competencies of project sponsors. The chapter talks about some of the primary motivations of executives, managers, business owners and others for choosing to take on the challenging role of sponsoring projects. It is commonly accepted that a project sponsors' leadership ability, and his/her associated capability to motivate others, are key to the success or failure of the project and the business plan. Individual project sponsors are required to be competent to deliver a successful project or programme. To enable consistently high performance with respect to delivering successful projects, the project sponsor would naturally look to be supported by the organisations' ability to provide skilled human resources and promote their engagement and development.
