subject: Managing The Stakeholders In Project Management [print this page] To complete your project successfully you have to identify all stakeholders at very early stage of project starting. After identifying them you have to analyze, classify them. Once all these tasks are completed you will plan a strategy to deal with them.
In this article I will try to cover all these concepts to give you better understanding.
OK, let start with the stakeholders.
Stakeholders: A stakeholder is a person, group of person or an organization who may affect or affected by the project or its outcome.
Few examples of stakeholders are as follows:
project sponsors
project manager
organization's management
project team members
end user of project's product
Now, the question arises, how to identify these stakeholders?
These stakeholders can be identified from the project charter, procurement documents (if the project is a result of any contract), interviewing and brainstorming etc.
Stakeholder Register: After identification of stakeholders, you have to list them in a register, which is known as the stakeholder register. This register should have all information about the stakeholders; e.g.
name
title
type (whether he is positive, neutral or negative) etc.
Analysis and Classification of Stakeholders: Once all stakeholders are identified and listed in stakeholder register, next job is to analyse and classify them.
Stakeholders can be classified in many ways, some of them are as follows:
Based on Power & Influence
Based on Influence & Impact
Based on Power & Interest
Based on Power, Urgency & Legitimacy.
Power and Influence: Here, stakeholders are classified as per their power and influence on the project or its outcome.
Influence and Impact: In this type of classification, stakeholders are divided as per their influence and the impact.
Power and Interest: Here, all stakeholders are grouped as per their power and interest on the project or its outcome.
Power, Urgency and Legitimacy: In this classification, stakeholders are classified as per their power, urgency and legitimacy.
In all classification discussed above, Power and Interest grid is very famous and used widely by the project professionals to classify the stakeholders.
Here stakeholders are managed as follows:
high power and high interest group should be given most attention and managed very closely.
high power and low interest group should be kept satisfied.
low power and high interest group should be kept informed.
low power and low interest group stakeholders should only be monitored.
Stakeholder Management Strategy: Objective of stakeholder management strategy is to increase the support and reduce the negative impact of stakeholders.
It is the job of the project manager to understand the project's stakeholders need and requirements and fulfill them accordingly. Your project's success depends a lot of extent that how to manage your stakeholders.
The best strategy to manage stakeholder is that, which keep informed concerned stakeholders about the project's progress, requirements and engage them with the project and keep satisfied all the time.
A project manager has to be very careful with this document as this may contain some sensitive information that cannot be shown or shared with anybody. Therefore, secure this document from the eyes of the others.
