Stakeholder Identification and Engagement

As project manager, you are required to identify all stakeholder people, groups, organizations, and analyze their stakeholder expectations and effectively engage them in project decisions so that the project can be executed with all due considerations. To help you through this process, you need to create a stakeholder registry and a stakeholder assessment that lists each individual’s role and influence over the project’s success.

• Identify your stakeholders by asking: Who is impacted by the project? Separate all stakeholders into two lists:
  • Stakeholders: any person or organization that is actively involved in the project, or that is positively or negatively impacted by it.
  • Key Stakeholders: any person who determines the success or failure of the project. Just remember, all Key Stakeholders D.A.N.C.E.:
    • Decisions, they control or influence the project budget,
    • Authority, they provide permission to proceed,
    • Need, they directly benefit from or are impacted by the project,
    • Connections, they remove roadblocks or exert influence when needed to ensure project success,
    • Energy, their positive or negative energy could affect project success.

• There are various Stakeholder classifications that can be helpful to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each stakeholder. Stakeholders can be internal or external, and can fall into one of these categories:
  • Supporter, aware of project and potential impacts and supportive to change,
  • Neutral, aware of project yet neither supportive nor resistant,
  • Resistor, aware of project and potential impacts and resistant to change,
  • Leading, aware of project and potential impacts, actively engaged in ensuring success,
  • Unaware, unaware of project and potential impacts.

• Stop and Consider: As project manager you are responsible for managing all stakeholder expectations and communications. You need to create a Project Stakeholder Register and Assessment.

• Create the Project Stakeholder Register and Stakeholder Assessment:
  • Inputs are source documents that you can use to help you create the Registry and Assessment. Don’t start from scratch, use these documents and expand them:
    • Insights into internal, external parties, customers, team members, groups, or departments, Procurement documents, Enterprise Environmental Factors(EEFs), such as organizational culture or structure, and Organizational Process Assets (OPAs), such as guidelines, policies, procedures, or templates.
  • Tools and Techniques you can use include:
    • Qualitative and quantitative information,
    • Determination of whose interests need to be managed,
    • Identification of stakeholder relationships,
    • Expert judgment, and
    • Meetings.
  • Outputs are the products you should have at the end of this process:
    • The Stakeholder Register lists all stakeholders for your project including their name, organization, position, location, and role in the project.
    • A Stakeholder Assessment which includes all stakeholder expectations, their potential influence, and project phase interests.

Article publié pour la première fois le 21/01/2020