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About this lesson
The Project Stakeholders' support is essential for project success. Project Stakeholders set the goals for the project and will ultimately determine whether the project is considered a success or failure.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Stakeholders
The Project Stakeholders' support is essential for project success. Project Stakeholders set the goals for the project and will ultimately determine whether the project is considered a success or failure.
When to use
All projects have stakeholders. At the time the project is initiated, the stakeholder’s goals and objectives for the project should be clarified and captured in the Project Charter. Throughout the project execution, many stakeholders will want to be kept informed about project progress and may want to participate in some project activities.
Instructions
Management of project stakeholders consists of managing the interactions between the project activities and the project stakeholders. It is normally defined in a Project Communication Plan. Typical stakeholder interactions that will need to be managed are:
- The identification of the stakeholder’s interpretation of project requirements
- The involvement of stakeholders in project decisions
- The identification of specific project activities in which the stakeholders want to participate
- The content and frequency of project communication for each stakeholder
To do this effectively, the project manager will need to understand the interest and level of involvement desired by each stakeholder. Based upon this understanding, the project manager can determine how best to communicate with the stakeholders about project goals, project plans, project status, and project risks.
At the time of initiation, the project manager should carefully interact with stakeholders to determine the project requirements. Often different stakeholders will have different requirements that may even be contradictory. The project manager must determine the urgency and priority of all the requirements so that an effective project plan can be developed when the project transitions to the project planning stage. The project manager can do this by asking two questions with respect to each requirement:
- What is the impact on the stakeholder if the requirement is completed?
- What is the impact on the stakeholder if the requirement is only partially completed (or not at all)?
Hints & tips
- Keep Project Stakeholders informed, especially during a project crisis. When there is a lack of information, they often assume the worst and may withdraw their support for the project.
- Cast a wide net to find your project stakeholders. If the potential stakeholder isn’t critical to your project, the analysis we will discuss in a later lesson will screen them out. But if you never identified them to begin with, you could miss a critical stakeholder.
- 00:04 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen, and
- 00:06 I'll be talking about project stakeholders in this segment.
- 00:09 We don't directly manage the stakeholders.
- 00:12 They don't normally report to the project team, but
- 00:15 we do manage our interactions with stakeholders.
- 00:18 Stakeholder support is often needed for successful project execution.
- 00:23 The stakeholders provide key resources that are needed by the project.
- 00:27 They can veto a project if they lose confidence in the project's ability to
- 00:31 deliver the promised business benefit.
- 00:34 The project team should proactively manage the stakeholder interactions.
- 00:39 One aspect of proactively managing the stakeholders is to engage the stakeholders
- 00:43 for key decisions.
- 00:44 When project decisions will have long-term impact on the business,
- 00:48 stakeholders should be included in the decision process.
- 00:51 Stakeholders may also need to provide special support for the project.
- 00:55 For instance, the project team may want to come
- 00:58 into work during hours when the business is normally closed.
- 01:02 This would allow them to test the new system without disrupting existing
- 01:06 operations.
- 01:07 This may require facility support for people who are not normal team members,
- 01:11 a stakeholder will need to authorize this.
- 01:14 Of course, stakeholders need to be informed about project status, so
- 01:17 regular communication will need to be established.
- 01:20 Different stakeholders want different information and
- 01:22 delivered in different ways.
- 01:24 All of this takes effort.
- 01:25 It's important to maintain stakeholder support.
- 01:29 They can eliminate barriers and provide extra support when needed.
- 01:33 Let's focus for a moment on our stakeholder communication.
- 01:36 As we just discussed, stakeholder interactions are critical for
- 01:39 project success, and those interactions involve some form of communication.
- 01:44 At the time of project origination, stakeholders communicate their intent for
- 01:49 the project through the project charter.
- 01:51 This document captures what they would like to see happen on the project, and
- 01:55 they will expect it to happen unless you tell them otherwise.
- 01:59 Now, to maintain some type of consistency and confidence in the project
- 02:02 communication, it's normally handled by the project leader.
- 02:06 That would mean the project manager, core team members or
- 02:09 the scrum master and product owner.
- 02:11 Also, these leaders are a conduit for communication.
- 02:15 They need to communicate two ways, outward to stakeholders and
- 02:18 inward to team members.
- 02:20 At the beginning of the project,
- 02:22 communication is focused on project goals and expectations.
- 02:26 Over time, it will turn into status reporting and risk management.
- 02:30 One of the best things a project manager can do when on a large, complex project
- 02:35 with many stakeholders is to create a stakeholder communication plan.
- 02:39 You don't want to overlook the stakeholder.
- 02:41 And when there are many, that can accidentally happen.
- 02:44 The plan will assist the project manager to avoid that type of problem.
- 02:49 One more comment about stakeholders and requirements.
- 02:52 Stakeholders don't always agree with each other.
- 02:55 They may have different requirements, and sometimes these will be contradictory.
- 02:59 For that reason, the project manager or project owner on an agile
- 03:03 project must capture all the requirements as soon as possible and
- 03:07 discover if there are contradictions.
- 03:10 You should solve these issues now before the project presses forward.
- 03:14 Otherwise, you could be well into the project and suddenly find stakeholders
- 03:17 withholding their support because you're not meeting their expectations.
- 03:22 Another thing to do with all those stakeholder requirements is to determine,
- 03:26 based upon the stakeholders' needs, the priority of each requirement.
- 03:29 Is it an absolute must have, or is it just a nice to have if you can fit it in?
- 03:35 This will help you to understand where to take risk and
- 03:38 how to manage your resources.
- 03:40 You can get a good insight on the priority by asking the question,
- 03:43 what is the impact to the stakeholder when the requirement is completed?
- 03:47 And what is the impact if the requirement is only partially completed?
- 03:52 If we understand the stakeholders' goal for the project,
- 03:56 we'll know how best to measure project success.
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