Your Project Looks Successful. Does Your Sponsor Agree?

Put the why to work

PMI previewed these findings at PMI® Global Summit 2026, the world's largest event for project professionals and senior leaders, ahead of the full report’s release. Tricia Cabrey, director of market research and consumer insights at PMI, presented the research and moderated a panel with Pincot and two other PMI executives: Abdullah Wright, chief strategy officer, and Menaka Gopinath, chief marketing officer. All three have led projects and sponsored them, and they were candid about what they need from the project professionals who lead them.

The panel’s stories and the research point to three places when knowing why a project exists pays off: defining success, making decisions and using AI.

1. Know what your sponsor is measuring

Senior leaders and project professionals judge a finished project in different ways. Asked which of 23 criteria they used to evaluate their most recently completed project, senior leaders cited strategic alignment more than any other. It ranked 12th among project professionals.

Three criteria show the largest and fastest-growing gaps. Since 2024, the gap on strategic alignment has nearly tripled, as senior leaders selected it more often each year and project professionals’ share slipped.

They’re also the criteria most strongly associated with project success. When senior leaders selected one of them, their projects scored 12 to 24 points higher on the Net Project Success Score (NPSS) than when they didn’t, depending on the criterion.

Senior leaders also judge projects on more criteria overall: a median of seven, compared with four for project professionals. Together, these gaps create a risk. Project professionals can deliver well against the criteria they’re managing while sponsors and other senior leaders judge the project on others no one stated. The project looks healthy during execution, then falls short at a major decision point or at close, when it’s much harder to fix.

The fix is for project professionals to know what’s on their sponsor’s list, regardless of whether it’s on theirs. That means making the full set of success measures explicit for each project, comparing them with their own and revisiting them as conditions change.

That’s harder than it sounds, because the why can get lost in both directions. In Pincot’s example, the leaders’ intent didn’t fully reach the project team. At the same time, the team did not find a way to communicate its concerns to leaders. The true meaning of the project was muddled as the objective was communicated across multiple organizational levels. “Lost in translation, lost in PowerPoints,” Pincot said.

Gopinath said closing that distance starts with curiosity and listening. “Don’t just assume,” she said. The question she wishes project professionals asked her more often is why. When something about a project doesn’t make sense, she said, the first question to ask is “What’s really behind this ask?”

The sponsor isn’t the only one judging the project, either. Gopinath encouraged project professionals to think about everyone a project will affect, including people with no role in the work. “What is this person going to care about? How do I get ahead of that?”

Those questions lead back to the same place. Knowing why a project exists shows what its success criteria are meant to measure and makes it easier to spot the ones no one has said out loud.

2. Move from supporting decisions to leading them

Given their roles, it makes sense that senior leaders and project professionals spend their effort in different places. Senior leaders focus more on decisions. Project professionals focus more on process and execution. That difference may help explain the gap in how each group measures success.

Excludes “it varies” and “not sure” responses, so columns don’t total 100%.

The split is best understood as a continuum, from supporting decisions to leading them. Moving along it builds on execution, which remains essential. The opportunity for project professionals is to broaden their focus to include the decisions that shape a project’s value.

Project professionals are well placed to lead those decisions because they sit close to the work. They often see dependencies, constraints, risks and stakeholder reactions before senior leaders do. Wright believes decisions should be made close to where the information is, and that includes the everyday ones. “Where things tend to fail isn’t the top-order decision,” he said. “It’s all the hundreds of decisions that happen on a day-to-day basis that no one gets visibility into.” Understanding why a project exists gives project professionals the context to make those calls well.

Someone still has to own the final call, though. “At some level, there has to be ownership of the ultimate decision,” Gopinath said. “We all have our roles to play in that, but they have to be informed at every level.” Project professionals lead by improving how decisions get made.

PMI research identified 10 decision-making practices, each tied to M.O.R.E., that are most associated with project success. They cover the full decision cycle:

• Framing: define the problem clearly, set success criteria upfront and frame decisions in the context of broader organizational goals.
• Options: challenge decision assumptions and discuss trade-offs.
• Selection: prioritize key perspectives, align stakeholders on decision criteria and expectations, and define the decision owner and escalation path.
• Follow-through: document the rationale for future learning and set an outcome-tracking plan.

Each practice is associated with an NPSS increase of 8 to 16 points. The strongest are defining the problem clearly (+16), challenging decision assumptions (+15) and documenting the rationale for future learning (+15).

Project professionals can decide to broaden their focus at any point, but the organization’s trust in them to lead decisions may be slower to build. “You don’t get that seat at the table from day one,” Pincot said. She described two steps that build credibility with senior leaders. The first is bringing reliable information. “If you don’t distinguish between facts, hearsay and your opinions, you’re basically drawing that executive into the noise.” The second is bringing options: the choices, the trade-offs behind each one and a recommendation. “You might not always be right,” she said. “But through transparency and exercising critical thinking, you build your credibility and your authority over time.”

3. Use AI to inform your judgment

AI use is already widespread in project work. According to 2026 PMI project success research, 62% of project professionals said they used AI on their most recently completed project. Of those, 96% reported faster decisions, better decisions or both.

Used well, AI speeds up access to information, helps generate options and helps project professionals build the business acumen they need to lead decisions. But AI doesn't know stakeholders' unstated concerns or an organization's constraints. “It’s not about the answer, it’s about the question,” Pincot said. “It is our responsibility to understand what we even need to ask for or ask about.”

Once AI produces an answer, the next job is testing it. “AI has an answer, it does not have the answer,” Wright said. AI also doesn’t own what happens next. Project professionals add the context it lacks and take accountability for how the answer is used. In other words, AI can raise the floor by expanding what project professionals can do. The M.O.R.E. mindset and human judgment raise the ceiling by making sure that capability is aimed at the right problem and the right value.

In practice, getting value from AI starts with understanding how the work gets done today and what the team is trying to achieve, then working back to how AI can help deliver it, Gopinath said. Understanding purpose is also the standard project professionals can test AI’s answers against.

Start with one conversation

The research points to a first step any project professional can take this week: Choose one important active project and have a candid conversation with the senior leaders who will judge its value. The goal is to create clarity, reset expectations and deepen engagement. Questions like these can guide it:

• Which success criteria matter most now?
• Are we still aligned on what the end goal looks like, and how it connects to strategy, long-term value or ROI?
• How are we navigating key trade-offs?
• What’s working well?
• Where are we off track?
• What has changed since the project began?
• What needs to change to deliver more value?

These questions bring hidden expectations into the open before they turn into late surprises. They also give project professionals an opening to bring evidence, frame choices and lead a better decision process.

Project professionals worried about taking up a sponsor’s time can take Wright’s advice: Stay in regular contact and build the relationship. “You may think you’re being a bother; you’re not,” he said. The more often project professionals reach out, the more sponsors trust them to raise the right questions or bring the answer. Pincot suggests coming with something to offer. “Don’t think, ‘I want to take your time,’” she said, “but ‘I want to give something to you to make your work easier.

Senior leaders have a part to play

Closing the gap is shared work. For the best results, senior leaders need to do their part: provide the strategic context and decision criteria project professionals need, give them appropriate room to lead decision processes and create clear paths to raise risks or changes that could undermine a project’s strategic value.

Gopinath compared a leader to the host of a party. If guests walk in and no one is talking, it’s awkward, and nobody wants to say anything. “There’s a very clear responsibility for leaders to make space for that,” she said.

Sponsors can’t see everything, and they rely on project professionals to tell them what they’re missing. In Pincot’s systems integration story, the team’s concerns went unheard. Now a sponsor herself, she wants project teams to bring her the questions they might otherwise hold back.

The full findings will be available on the PMI thought leadership hub in December 2026.

Tags: Project Performance | Strategy | Leadership | Communication | Artificial Intelligence

Quick answers to common questions about decision leadership

What is decision leadership in project management?

Decision leadership means taking an active role in shaping how project decisions are made. Project professionals clarify the problem, bring together relevant evidence and perspectives, explain trade-offs and recommend a path forward. They keep choices connected to the project’s intended value and make sure the appropriate decision-maker is involved. Leading the decision process does not mean making every decision yourself.

How can project managers align success criteria with their sponsors?

Start by asking what the project is meant to achieve and how the sponsor will judge whether it was worth the investment. Compare those expectations with the measures the team uses to track progress and make any differences explicit. Agree on which outcomes matter and what trade-offs are acceptable. Revisit that understanding as business priorities, project conditions or stakeholder needs change.

Who is accountable for decisions supported by AI?

Humans remain accountable for decisions and their consequences when AI contributes analysis or recommendations. Using AI does not transfer accountability away from the designated decision-maker. Project professionals should check the evidence, question assumptions and assess whether suggested actions fit the project’s purpose and constraints. Where a decision requires sponsor or executive authority, AI support does not change that requirement.

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