Acknowledgments

Vicki thanks her coauthors: Peter, for taking a chance on this collaboration with an unpublished author, and Ron, for his attention to detail and plans that helped to keep the project on track. She would also like to thank Chandra Moss for inadvertently pushing her to achieve the PMP, the first step that sparked the passion for project management best practices that she has today. She also thanks Randy Englund and Alfonso Bucero for their book Project Sponsorship: Achieving Management Commitment for Project Success, which kicked off her interest in this topic and for the friendship that has since formed. And finally, she thanks Megan Pilon (project management office manager) and Lynne McGuire (sponsor of many projects), who were there in the early days of her career and helped shape the project manager she has become.

Ron thanks his fellow authors for their challenging approach and sense of humor. His wife Sue must also come in for special mention for helping to make the task of writing the book less daunting and much more enjoyable. He would also like to thank the many unnamed project sponsors he has met who have inspired him to create and develop, along with his fellow authors, this book.

Peter thanks his coauthors for their shared wisdom and experience, Sheilina Somani for the “good project sponsor” story (and the lunch), Eileen Roden for her roundtable inspiration at the APMG-International event in London, and Sarah Coleman for her insight. He also wishes to add his gratitude for the support from Jim Johnson of The Standish Group for sharing the work that they were undertaking with regard to executive sponsorship.

All the authors wish to thank everyone who contributed to this book by way of completing the survey, sharing their own sponsor story, joining in the Project Sponsors group discussions on LinkedIn, or reviewing the manuscript.

And thank you to Management Concepts for sponsoring the whole project.

If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN