Chapter 21: Identifying the Project Stakeholders

In the chapter on Project Stakeholders a few chapters back, we had listed down some of the important stakeholders in any project. In this chapter, we are going to look at how exactly we can identify the stakeholders for a project and the rationale behind the whole process of Identifying Stakeholders.

So, lets get started!!!

Who are Project Stakeholders?

I would suggest you go back to the chapter on Project Stakeholders to refresh your understanding of who these people are. But, to summarize in short, Project Stakeholders are individuals & organizations whose interests are affected by the Projects Execution and Completion. A point to note is that, this impact on them could be either positive or negative. To put it simply, they have something to gain or lose depending on the success of the project.

Usually, project managers overlook negative stakeholders which might increase the project risk. Ignoring such negative stakeholders will have a damaging impact on the project. So, it is important that you, as the project manager identify all stakeholders esp. the Negative stakeholders.

Why Identify the Stakeholders?

Identifying all the project stakeholders might be a difficult task, but the obvious ones include the project manager, program manager, portfolio manager, customers and users, project sponsor, project management office, project team, operations management, sellers and business partners, and functional managers. A detailed explanation of all these stakeholders can be viewed here

In addition to these key stakeholders, there can be a number of other less obvious stakeholders inside and outside of your organization. Depending upon the project, these might include investors, sellers, contractors, family members of the project team members, government agencies, media, and even the society as a whole.

It is critical for the success of the project that you identify positive and negative stakeholders early on in the project, understand and analyze their varying and conflicting expectations, and manage those expectations throughout the project.

Identifying the Stakeholders:

The process of identifying stakeholders is a bit complicated and requires careful and cautious effort from the Project Management Team. This activity would include:

1. Identify individuals and organizations that will influence the project and will be impacted by the project.
2. Document relevant information about the individuals and organizations and about their interests and involvement in the project.
3. Document how these individuals and organizations can influence the project and how they can be impacted by the project.
4. Determine their levels of importance.

Let us now look at a picture to understand this process better:

As you can see, there is an input to the stakeholder identification process, it uses a set of tools and techniques and provides an output. This output is our stakeholder document that outlines the stakeholders in the project and the impact (positive or negative) that they might have on the project.

Because identifying and analyzing the stakeholders and managing their expectations and influence is so critical to the success of the project, you should start this task early on in the project.

Let us now take a detailed look at how the whole process of identifying stakeholders happens.

Input to Identifying Stakeholders

As in the picture above, the following entities are the input to the stakeholder identification process.

Project charter

The project charter greatly helps to identify stakeholders by revealing the internal and external individuals and groups who either are directly involved in the project or will potentially be impacted by it. Project sponsors, customers, and departments of the performing organization participating in the project are some examples of stakeholders who can be identified by using the project charter.

Procurement documents

If the project originated from procurement activity, then the procurement documents, such as the contract, will be useful to identify the stakeholders. Even if this project is going to use procurement in order to produce part of its product, the procurement documents will help to identify some (not all) stakeholders, such as sellers and suppliers.

Enterprise environmental factors

Examples of the enterprise environmental factors that help identify stakeholders include governmental and industry standards, organizational cultures, and organizational structure. It’s important to understand the organization’s culture and structure in order to identify some stakeholders and their possible impact on the project, because different people will have different levels of authority and influence under different cultures and structures. More details on Enterprise Environmental Factors can be found in the article “click here”

Organizational process assets

The stakeholder register templates and the stakeholder registers from previous projects can be useful to create the stakeholder registers for the current project at hand. Another example of the organizational process assets helpful in identifying stakeholders are the lessons learned from previous projects. All process assets in an organization can found in the Project Management Office (PMO). More details on Organizational Process Assets can be found in this article “click here”

Tools and Techniques for Identifying Stakeholders

The tools and techniques used to identify stakeholders include expert judgment and stakeholder analysis. Expert Judgment was discussed in the Previous Chapter and it plays a significant role in identification of stakeholders. Stakeholder Analysis will be covered in the Next. An experienced project manager would put to use all his learnings and expertise and identify all possible stakeholders. Plus you need to conduct lot of meetings to get the necessary inputs to allow you to identify the stakeholders.

Output of Identifying Stakeholders

The output items of the Identify Stakeholders process are the stakeholder register and the stakeholder management strategy.

What is Stakeholder Register?

After your stakeholder analysis and identification, you store all the information about the stakeholders that you identified in a document called the stakeholder register. This information includes:

• Identification - For example, name, location, organizational position, project role and contact information.
• Assessment - Requirements and expectations coming from this stakeholder, the part or the phase of the project that is of most interest to this stakeholder, and assessment of his/her potential influence on the project.
• Classification - There will be a whole array of different kinds of project stakeholders with varied influence. So it’s helpful to classify them by using suitable criteria, such as whether they are internal or external to the performing organization, proponents or opponents of the project, and so on.

The Stakeholder Management Strategy is the plan that you put forth as to how you are going to manage and handle each of the stakeholders. This is something we will be looking in great detail in one of the next chapters.

Note: In PMBOK 4th Edition this process also had an output which was the Stakeholder Management Strategy but that has been removed in the 5th edition. So, the input, tools, output chart above has been updated to remove this

Previous: Developing a Project Charter

Next: Stakeholder Analysis

Chapter 9: The Most Influential Stakeholder

In the previous chapter, we took a look at all the people who maybe stakeholders in a project and can have a positive or negative impact on a project. In this chapter, we are going to look at the most influential stakeholder in a project, the person on whom a bulk of the weight of the projects success or failure rests on…

So, lets get started!!!

Who is this Most Influential Stakeholder?

Well the answer is YOU

You, the project manager, are a very special project stakeholder yourself. The job (role) of a project manager is extremely challenging and thereby exciting. Depending on the organizational structure of your organization, you may be reporting to a functional manager, a program manager, a portfolio manager, or to some other manager or executive. Nevertheless, it is your responsibility to work with your team and other relevant individuals and groups, such as program managers and portfolio managers, to bring all the pieces together and make the project happen i.e., to achieve the project objectives.

To do this, you need a range of skills and capabilities. They are:

1. Communication
2. Negotiation
3. Problem Solving
4. Influencing
5. Leadership

Let us take a look at these skills, one by one.

Communication

The importance of communication in project management cannot be overemphasized. Even a well scheduled and well funded project can fail in the hands of a hardworking team of experts due to the lack of proper communication. As a project manager, you might be dealing with a wide variety of individuals, ranging from executives, to marketing personnel, to hardcore technologists. You should be able to wear different communication hats depending upon whom you are communicating with. For example, you will not be using technical jargon to talk to executives or marketing folks, and you will not speak marketing terms to the software developers.

You will be speaking to different stakeholders in their language, while filling the language gap between different functional groups and eliminating misunderstandings due to miscommunication. The key point is that you put on the appropriate communication hat depending on which individual you are dealing with. You, as the project manager must be able to switch communication hats quickly and avoid technical jargon and acronyms that are not understood by the person or group with whom you are communicating. The goal is clarity of the language to convey the message accurately.

You will be communicating throughout the project. So, for any project, you must develop a communication strategy that addresses the following issues:

1. What needs to be communicated?
2. With whom do you want to communicate?
3. How do you want to communicate or what is the medium of communication?
4. What is the outcome of your communication?

The answer to all of the above questions would vary depending on the situation and the mode that the other party is most comfortable with. Some users might like email while some prefer a face to face meeting. You, as the project manager must take the judgment call and choose the best mode such that all the parties are happy. Also, You need to monitor your communication and its results to see what works and what does not, so you can improve communication.

Negotiation

A negotiation is give and take, with the goal of generating a win-win outcome for both parties. You might need to negotiate at any stage of the project lifecycle. A good negotiator can resolve a conflict between two people and make them both feel that, they have won.
Here are some examples of negotiations:

1. Negotiating with stakeholders regarding expectations during the project planning. For example, the suggested deadline for the project schedule might not be practical, or you might need a certain type or quantity of resources to make it happen.
2. Negotiating with functional managers to obtain human resources, such as software developers.
3. Negotiating with team members for specific job assignments and possibly during conflict resolution among the team members.
4. Negotiating changes to the project schedule, budget, or both because a stakeholder proposed changes to the project objectives.
5. Negotiating with external vendors in procurement. However, in contract negotiations, representatives from the legal department might be involved.

Problem Solving

Project-related problems might occur among the stakeholders or with the projects. Most commonly problems come up within the project team. Either way, they are there to damage the project. Your task is to identify the problem early enough and to solve it. Here is the general technique for accomplishing this:

1. Look for early warning signs by paying close attention to formal progress reports and to what the team members say and do regarding the project.
2. Once you identify a potential problem, do your homework. Understand and identify the problem clearly by collecting more information without passing judgment.
3. Once the problem and its causes are clearly identified, work with the appropriate stakeholders, such as project team members, to explore multiple solutions.
4. Evaluate the multiple solutions and choose the one you will implement.
The key point throughout the problem-solving process is to focus on the problem, not on the individuals, with the goal of finding the solution in order to help the project succeed. There should be no finger-pointing. At the end of the day the success of the project should be your goal.

Influencing

Influencing means getting individuals or groups to do what you want them to do without necessarily having formal authority to mandate an outcome from them. This is increasingly becoming an essential management skill in today’s world. People no longer appreciate authoritative bosses and they tend to rebel or under perform if we try to exercise control on them. But, if we can influence them, then they will not only do what you want but also be happy about it. To exercise influence, you must understand the formal and informal structure of your organization. Again, you might need to use influencing when you are dealing with any aspect of the project—for example, controlling changes to the project, negotiating schedule or resource assignments, resolving conflicts, and so on.

Leadership

In the traditional organizational structure, project managers do not have formal authority over the project team members who perform the teamwork. So you have no other choice than to manage by leadership and not by authority. The good news is that managing by leadership is more effective and productive than managing by authority anyway. A project team is generally a group of individuals coming together for the lifetime of the project from different functional groups with different skills and experience. They need a leader to show them the vision and to excite, inspire, and motivate them toward the goals and the objectives of the project. You, the project manager, are that leader. You can lead your team in the right path to ensure the success of the project.

The Golden Triplet

PMI recommends that in addition to the skills related to application areas and management, an effective project manager must have the following three characteristics:
1. Knowledge - knowledge of project management.
2. Performance - The ability to use the knowledge to perform the project i.e., to make accomplishments and get the job done.
3. Personal - This relates to the behavior of the project manager while performing the project and the related activities. This includes personal effectiveness, attitude, ethics and leadership.

In other words, an effective project manager uses personal abilities, such as a positive attitude, leadership skills, good ethics and professional behavior to apply project management knowledge effectively in order to lead the project to success.


Previous: Project Stakeholders

Next: Organizational Influence on Projects