As part of MPUG’s 2018 Community Survey, we asked the question, “Are you getting the feedback you need from program sponsors?” The results came in, and we learned that over 50% of you thought this area needed improvement. Another 18% of you said an affirmative “NO” in answer to this question, which led us to ask a few weeks back, what is going on with your project sponsors?
Well, we received a “winner” nightmare story, which is published anonymously below:
I once had a sponsor that knew he needed someone to be in charge of projects. The problem was he just had a serious disdain for all Project Managers. He also had a strong dislike of any sort of formality at all. He would determine what project his department was going to work on, and then he would get someone to be in charge of the project. It was usually a Project Manager, but if someone was in the hallway at the wrong time and made eye contact with him, they might find themselves in charge of something they hadn’t quite bargained for.
After an informal discussion or phone call with the new PM to kick off the project, he’d assume the person was off and running. Of course, he wouldn’t commit to anything on paper. Project definition was always extremely brief and rarely helpful. It was always something generic and short such as, “Create Report on XYZ for me.” For a large project, it might be a whole sentence, but something like, “Create a new website portal that allows customers make payments.”
To make matters worse, his projects always seemed to be IT centric, even though his department was not IT. It would be up to the PM to go to IT and get the appropriate resources, or go around IT, if needed, since this sponsor didn’t see the need for system or app congruity. Getting detailed information out of him was difficult. Your best bet was to hope the project idea was generated by someone else. At least then you could quiz them about the project and/or dig for the requirements.
Of course, budget, time, and scope were never defined, and therefore never achieved by the Project Manager. And it was always the PM’s fault for not hitting the targets–you know the one’s that were only in the sponsor’s head. Since nothing was documented when he presented the results of these projects to his equals or superiors, they were always promoted as on time, on budget, and the outcome exactly what was desired from the beginning.
Many Project Managers, including myself, did our own documentation as an attempt to protect ourselves. We collected unanswered emails and scope documents that were not signed, but it seemed he was still always able to place the blame on the poor person who couldn’t possibly read his mind.
Naturally, he was promoted to a higher functional level in the organization. I guess due to the fact that his department functioned ok overall—or was it because he was so good at getting projects done on time, on budget, and always within the un-defined scope?
The Contrary PM
This is very common. It’s called Survivor – Project Island Edition. You have to outwit, outsmart, and outmaneuver this sponsor. His superiors don’t care about his methods or the body count in his path since it looks like he gets results. The lack of organizational controls allows this reckless behavior to continue.
I had a sponsor/boss (bad idea) who would go back to resource managers and refuse to pay for their peoples’ time after the fact. They haggled it down every single time and he changed the records that went to accounting! He had less assertive people trained to go along with his demands. Nobody in accounting picked up on his constant “mistake corrections” to the hours for re-billing. The resource departments’ budgets were always way over from absorbing his project costs. I refused to manually change the hours on my projects because that’s dishonest and could get ME in trouble. If there’s going to be fraud, it won’t be my doing. He was verbally abusive to his PMs and would threaten disciplinary action frequently. I had chest pain while working for him. I was dumbfounded nobody outed him to Finance or HR for hostile work environment, but we were all paralyzed with fear. When cornered, he blamed everybody in a ten mile radius for being incompetent, under skilled, lazy, and for putting *him* in a tough spot. He suddenly became the victim. I didn’t file complaints because I was young and didn’t know how to advocate for myself or keep records about the bullying. I left that company because of him and the fact his leadership turned a blind eye to the damage he was doing to people.
At a different place, I had been on several “doozy” assignments and had a PMO manager who confronted the sponsor/trouble makers and informed them he was removing all of his PMs from their work because of the stressful conditions they created for us. It was a beautiful thing. He permanently won my respect that day, and theirs too. I was sad the day he retired. I try to live up to that example in my work.
Doing things the PMBOK or PRINCE2 (or any other standard way) assumes the organization is mature enough to value orderly and controlled work, transparency, understands the expense of being chaotic, and wants to get better at it. When you’re not on that planet, you have to seriously evaluate whether you can stay or should go somewhere your work is appreciated and you have management support.
If you get assigned to someone like this and you aren’t covered by a strong PMO or your own management…get off that assignment any way you can for your own mental health. If nobody will take that sponsor’s requests, it sends a message back to the leadership. He will have to accrue more expense for outside consulting PMs.