Project Owner vs Project Sponsor

[cag1223]

Hello We are an in-house team without true PM roles. Our traffic coordinator oversees all of the intake for new projects or tasks to our creative team. Currently, she assigns the reviewer/requestor as the Project Sponsor but we are toying with the idea of making them the Project Owner instead of the traffic coordinator defaulting as the Project Owner. She really isn't the project owner but she is the only one who has the permissions to make global edits. For those of you who use WF without true PM's, what is your opinion and how do you assign Project Owners and Project Sponsors? Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks! Chris Chris Garbrandt Director, Creative Services Nationwide Children's Hospital

[AllisonLi1]

Generally the project owner is the person in charge of planning the project timeline, making task assignments, and tracking the work on the project to ensure it is completed on time. A project sponsor tends to be an internal executive sponsor, or sometimes even the person who requested the project. Keep in mind the restrictions the different users have when it comes to viewing and managing projects. This starts with the license type, and then is further controlled by the access level assigned to the user, and then further controlled by the sharing permissions on the project. The highest level of access a review or request license will have to a project is View. This is a good support article to start with:

[MichaelLe]

Allison is again on point. Our traffic dept for the creative work has generally been the project owners but they are not the ones doing the work or even managing the work. We have tried having them as the sponsor but for our purposes the sponsor has been the account managers. We ended up sharing the projects they create with them at the template level so they have manage rights. I'm not sure it's the right set up for others but it seems to be working for us.

[DagmaraGa]

Hi there. Within our IS department we've got 'proper' PMs but they manage only big projects. Worth to mention - within out methodology we've got Lite and Full projects. The latter are managed by true PMs. Log story short.. In case of Lite projects - Project Owner is understood as person managing a project(timeline, assignment, documentations, etc) and, in most of cases, it's also person doing the work. We do not allow Project Owner being same person as Project Sponsor. Project Sponsor is accountable for a project - any issues which PM cannot sorted has to be shared with PS. PS looks after a project and check how we're doing with it and received updates/highlight reports from PM. Hope that helps :) Dagmara Garwell BAKKAVOR LTD

[JillAc]

I have this situation and I am assigning the Owner to be the Requester if they are a licensed Worker user. I have given them all the access they can get through that license so they can manage the project. It's been a lot of training and they are becoming more project managers than they had been in the past, responsible for all the deadlines in their project and keeping it up to date. When I say a lot of training, I mean a lot of training – and some of them just don't get it so it has been very challenging. So far, the only important thing they can't do on a project is change the status so they have to tell either me or the traffic manager (the Planner/Admins) to change it. What I do (or the traffic manager does) after a request is a to select the appropriate template, fill in some details that we know about, and set it up as well as possible. Then we notify the owner that they need to get the Plan in place with proper deadlines and let us know. When they are done (usually with me helping them) they send an Update and we make it Status=Current. Me and the Traffic Manager monitor the project list and when something is at 100% we make it Status=Closed. For requesters who aren't licensed, the owner is the traffic manager, and then she also has the responsibility to communicate with the requester to make sure the deadlines are being met. Jill Ackerman | Director, Direct Marketing Lindblad Expeditions 96 Morton Street | New York, NY 10014 Ph. 212.261.9080 | Fax. 212.265-3770 jilla@expeditions.com | "http://www.expeditions.com/"> www.expeditions.com

[cag1223]

Thank you all for your insights and how you are handling. We, as traffic managers, do not necessarily need to be notified of anything after the project has been assigned unless there is a major issue which can be resolved though issue/request management within the project itself since the reviewer/requestor or even the worker can assign us to those issues. Michael - You're in line with how we are currently set up. Jill - I think we may be headed down your path. So, I may reach out for more info especially with training. Much appreciated! -Chris Chris Garbrandt Nationwide Children's Hospital chris.garbrandt@nationwidechildrens.org

[SharonFl]

I figured I'd throw in my answer since we are also a healthcare system. We do work that comes to our department from account planners - each calling on several service lines (heart, cancer, transplant, etc). Account Planner makes a project request and Traffic approves it (do we have what we need to start it) and converts to a Project listing the AP as the project owner with managing rights, and then if there's a manager of the team who will do the work - that person is the project sponsor. Traffic attaches Template and sends to first manager for assignments (meaning if it's a web or print project a different team manager would make assignments for tasks on the template). Not sure we have fully understood if it's been helpful to even have a project sponsor...and in some cases we don't. Hope that helps in some way. Sharon Flynn University of Virginia Health System

[PriyankaMa]

Hi everyone,

a. Please confirm on my understanding on what Project owner and Project sponsor mean - 

In Workfront I believe, Project Owner would act like a Project manager. And Project Sponsor would be somebody who has authority to decide whether to go ahead with the project or not, and may even be involved in budgeting.

However, from system's setup point of view, when I make somebody a project sponsor, they dont get any rights on the project. I need to share the project with them, and give them view/ edit rights. Even when the person has "Project Manager" access level.

Then what I am not able to get is, what permissions does WF give to the person who is marked as Project Sponsor for a project.

I am new to Workfront, so please excuse if it is a silly question.