PM ADVISORY:

Benchmarking SRO’s attitudes: the quandary of the SRO

By Paul Mansell,
Director, Moorhouse Consulting

London, UK

Private and public organisations across the globe are at a critical point in their history. The current economic climate means there will be winners and losers; the losers will succumb to the ‘pull’ of the recession, whilst the winners will harness the opportunities to pro-actively ‘push’ themselves through the current fog. Forward thinking organisations recognise that driving success through programme delivery excellence will be the key to success.

At the apex of programme governance is the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO), sometimes known as the Programme Sponsor or Executive Sponsor, and it is this critical role and its current pressures, that we considered in a recent research study.

Many SROs are caught between a ‘rock and a hard place’ right now – new to the job, criticised for not having the vision, leadership or experience for the role, but in reality not truly enabled by their organisations due to wider systemic misunderstanding of programme governance and immature delivery capability.

In association with our partners (BT, The Home Office, the Association of Project Management and The APM Group), we interviewed eighty SROs across the public and private sector, who are together responsible for the delivery of programmes worth in excess of £24BN.

To read entire paper Click Here

About the Author Paul Mansell Author Paul Mansell is a Director at Moorhouse Consulting, the Association of Project Management's 'Project Management Company of the Year'. Previously a Director at Deloitte Consulting, Paul has broad programme leadership and management experience, particularly within the defence, transport, finance and telecoms sectors, and has successfully supported the delivery of high profile, complex programmes that have been subject to intense political and media scrutiny. Recent examples include lead strategic advisor to the National Programme for IT Repositioning programme and lead advisor to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority on its new ‘Intelligent Client’ Operating Model. Paul has an MA from Kings College London, an MPhil from Cambridge University, and programme management accreditation (PMP, PRINCE2, MSP Advanced Practitioner). He is a Fellow of both the Institute of Management Consultancy (CMC qualified) and the Association of Project Management. He is certified as a MBCI by the Business Continuity Institute and is a Chartered Director with the Institute of Directors. Paul can be contacted at paulmansell@moorhouseconsulting.com.