Notes on stakeholder management:

• Projects exist within a complex ecosystem of stakeholders and other projects managers managing projects which are related to you in some way
• Having a simple and concise way of analysing the ecosystem is a vital part of project management
• You need to be able to build a very open and transparent relationship with your stakeholders
• There are various types of models to identify and analyse stakeholders - affinity diagrams , RACI being two of them. But we will consider a simpler model here
• We will categorize stakeholders into 3 categories -
  • Critical : can stop project from succeding . Have to buy-in and sign-off on any critical decision within the project. Build and mantain relationship/communicate F2F
  • essential: can delay the project.You can find replacements but can delay you. Two-way communication
  • interested: Must be informed. As long as they are aware of what is happening , they will remain passive. One-way updates
• Consult and pre-consult your critical stakeholders.Ensure interested parties are communicated with
• Take the whole lifecycle model when engaging with your stakeholders. Interested in Dev obvious but who operate and realise the benefits are important as well.
• Typically during execution ( critical, essential and interested) during support( critical , essential ) and during benefit realisation( informed )
• Understanding the relationship/dependencies among projects is critical. There are 6 types:
  • Data : You are creating data they need or they are creating they need.
  • Function/Business process: You are creating a function that the other project needs or vice versa
  • Org impact : you are planning release at the same time as other project overloading the stakeholder community.
  • Funding relationship : if they dont deliver their benefits you dont get your costing
  • Technology: the other project has to build and deploy a piece of technology that you are dependent on
  • Shared resource: sharing a critical team member with another project manager.
• One way to better understand why your stakeholders behave in a certain way is a win/lose model
  • Ask yourself , if you are successfully deliver a project , what are the wins for a particular stakeholder and what are their losses for each win?
  • Builds open and trusting relationship with the stakeholders . Best time to use this tool is upfront , before you start the project

Reference 1 Reference 2

Will expand on this - TBD Reference 3 Reference 4