Q Executive Sponsorship Overview Executives are a special kind of stakeholder and communicating effectively with them is critical to ensuring their sponsorship and continuing support for a project. A project sponsor should provide leadership over the project life cycle and work together with the manager to meet project goals and resolve conflicting stakeholder requirements. In this assignment, you will share ways a colleague can improve her sponsor's engagement and project participation. Background A friend of yours is a software development project manager at CapraTek. At lunch one day, she shares her concern that her project sponsor (the VP of software development) is not adequately engaged in the Alfred! software update project. She feels that her project is falling behind and she needs more resources to get back on schedule. To do that, she needs the VP to engage in the project and authorize more resources. She asks you for ideas of how you would go about communicating with the VP to get engaged and offer support for her resource needs. If fact, she says that several project managers are having similar problems with project sponsors. You offer to do a presentation that might help guide them. Preparation Review the CapraTek activities in this unit's second study as needed for information helpful in completing this assignment. Directions Create a PowerPoint presentation, based on the information found in the CapraTek activity, which highlights principles and techniques for encouraging project sponsor engagement. Use your CapraTek project sponsor as an example for the friend in the scenario. It should outline a process in which you and your sponsor effectively engage. Include the following in your presentation: Define the roles and responsibilities of you (as project manager) and your sponsor. Identify what you need from your sponsor, what you anticipate your sponsor will need from you, and how you would investigate their needs. (Be creative to make and document assumptions that add realism and depth to your narrative.) Describe a process for establishing and maintaining (throughout the project) a commitment and effective communication between you and your sponsor. Include a description of a support network of individuals or groups that could assist in supporting your sponsor's engagement. Search the Internet to find a real-world professional development activity that would aid in training individuals in the area of executive sponsorship engagement. Describe it and explain why it would be effective in your example. Be sure to include detailed speaker's notes to explain or expound upon complex ideas or concepts.