In the edition of Project (the magazine of the Association for Project Management) which dropped onto my doormat this morning, there is an excellent piece on how to be a highly effective sponsor. In the second paragraph it says that the APM Body of Knowledge defines the sponsor role as “critical and crucial in equal measure.”

As a writer, words are quite important to me. So I looked up crucial and critical. Amongst other meanings, which I will come to soon, crucial means critical, and critical means crucial. So was this a piece of random alliteration? Crucial also means in the form of a cross, hence crucifixion. Well if you rotate a cross through 45 degrees then it looks a little like my hourglass model where the project sponsor and project manager work together at the neck of the hourglass translating and negotiation the project requirements between the organisation and the project team, then I can see that might be relevant.

The other meaning of crucial is: “That finally decides between hypotheses; relating or leading to decision between hypotheses; ; decisive; critical; very important.” Yes, project sponsorship is very important, and decisions have to be made.

The meanings of critical include: “pertaining to the crisis of a disease”, “of decisive importance, crucial; involving risk or suspense.”; “relating to a point of transition from one state to another.”

So, not random alliteration at all, but carefully chosen, appropriate words. A project is the transition of an organisation from one state to another, with plentiful risk and suspense.