Active key stakeholders engagement allows a successful project delivery. We meant to use the word engage and not manage because stakeholders include people that are in positions hierarchically higher than the project manager (PM), and management is virtually hard when there are no hierarchical affiliations. You will learn this in Program Management Professional – PgMP mostly, and Portfolio Management Professional – PfMP as well. Let us find out the reason for considering stakeholders as the essence of projects by checking the surrounding interactions from start to end!
Stakeholders, the essence of projects
At the start of a project, brainstorming sessions will help identify key stakeholders e.g. project’s sponsoring organization and company’s executives. Data such as names, positions, and roles with regards to the project will be logged in a stakeholder register. In addition to metadata i.e. degree of influence or opposition to the project, etc. Those key stakeholders are the most influential and/or have the most interest in the project; they can be negative or positive. They will also help in identifying other stakeholders, which will result in updating the stakeholder register. This is done through analysis, expert judgment and lessons learned from past projects. The stakeholders are then analyzed in order to find their influence, interest and support levels. In addition to their requirements and needs in order to prepare for their correct engagement throughout the project life-cycle.
Key stakeholders & Data
Let us highlight the project’s most important and most used asset, Data, and learn the importance of stakeholders with relation to it. Data flows in two directions, from and towards the project. Outbound data is in the form of reports and recommendations from the project to the stakeholders. Whereas inbound data is in the form of decisions and feedback from the stakeholders to the project. Additionally, stakeholders are important to constrain the pace of a project based on the requirements. For each phase or deliverable of a project, the PM needs to get related stakeholders’ approval for the continuation. This is done through performance and status reports submitted to the related stakeholders. The result of this is a feedback/decision for the go or no-go to the next phase. We consider stakeholders to be the binding element for the outbound and inbound data, and the other major asset of a project.
Key Stakeholders – Management
On another note, not all stakeholders need to be managed at the same level. For stakeholders with low interest and low influence, you can just keep them informed. As for stakeholders with high influence and high interest, you should keep them closely engaged. Positive stakeholders will support the project and will try to raise it up and above the success criteria. Whereas negative stakeholders can tremendously alter project’s success. Stakeholders management throughout the project life-cycle allows carving the path for a successful deliverable.
So what are stakeholders? They are the assets onto which projects’ success is built, and by which the delivered change penetrates the crust of operational activities. They are the essence of projects!
Stakeholder in Project Management
For PfMP, PgMP, and PMP candidates, Stakeholder Engagement integrates in every performance domain. We encourage professionals willing to attempt any of those certifications to well-understand stakeholder management. If you wish to know more about PfMP, PgMP, or PMP, visit our packages page and enroll in our free introductory journey overview course.
“Indulge your stakeholders, they are what makes the difference between failure and success”. Procifics