Increasing Your Chances of Project Approval

Submitting a project for funding approval can be stressful. Will management give thumbs up or down? Doing your homework and providing critical information is the key to getting your projects approved. Here are the questions to answer to increase your chances of project approval.

How will you meet financial targets? Many organizations have financial thresholds that a project must meet to obtain funding. Others don’t. In either case, understand your sponsor’s financial expectations for the project. Include an explanation of how you will meet financial targets in your high-level project plan.

What skills do you need? As projects represent unique endeavors, you might need to train staff members or hire contractors for your project. Do your homework to identify the availability of internal staff members. Also, determine the lead times you’ll need if you plan to hire skilled contractors. If possible, check with others who have run similar projects. Identify the cost of hiring top-notch contractors. If those costs are high, using internal staff members (even if they would take longer) might be preferable for your organization.

How does your project support your organization’s strategy? Often, projects are specifically designed to support strategy. In other cases, projects indirectly support strategy. For instance, one project might make other strategic projects easier to deliver. Management might not recognize these subtle links to strategy. In your project plan, spell out how your project helps implement your organization’s strategy.

How will you measure progress? It’s important to identify how you will track progress on your project. Also, how you will ensure project outcomes deliver business value. Many sponsors are wary of spending money on projects without a solid promise of receiving business value in return. You can reassure your sponsor and management by explaining how you will assess progress and business value during the project.

How will you transition to new tools and processes? Projects create business change. Create an overview of how you will train and transition project stakeholders to new ways of working. This is important, because new tools and processes can be intimidating. Your overview helps management understand how your approach to gaining acceptance of your project’s business changes.

Do you have any tips for helping obtain project approval? If so, share it with us in the comments section.

For more about obtaining approval for a project to proceed, check out my Project Management Foundations course.