Solutions By Lex

A vital aspect of project management that should happen during the requirements analysis phase is identifying any and all stakeholders. Stakeholders are people, groups, or organizations that could impact or be impacted by the project (PMBOK Guide 5^th edition, 2013, p. 391). Stakeholders will need to be effectively engaged in project decisions and execution via continuous communication to understand their needs and expectations, address issues as they occur, manage conflicts of interests and to manage overall stakeholder satisfaction. Though some stakeholders have more influence on the project than others, all must be identified, engaged and managed to ensure they always feel included and important to the project’s success.

When identifying the stakeholders, I look for anyone that could impact or be impacted by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project. The project team will need to understand relevant information pertaining to each stakeholder’s interests, interdependencies, influence, involvement, and potential level on impact on the project’s success. For identifying stakeholders, it is essential to take into consideration: the Project Charter; the Enterprise Environmental Factors; any Organizational Process Assets; and any pertinent Procurement documents. From there I even skim a few resumes and biographies of top executives and key personnel to really gain insight for who my team will be dealing with for the duration of the project.

The tools and techniques for stakeholder identification are: Stakeholder Analysis (a technique of systematically gathering and analyzing quantitative and qualitative information to determine whose interests should be taken into account throughout the project – can be classified into Power/Interest Grid, Power/Influence Grid, Influence/Impact Grid, or a Salience Model); Expert Judgment (judgment and expertise sought from groups of individuals with specialized training or subject matter expertise); and Meetings (use to develop better understanding and to establish communication). In order to manage Stakeholder relations my project team will make use of a Stakeholder Register, which contains all details related to the identified stakeholders, like: Identification information (i.e. name, organizational position, location, contact information, role in the project, etc.); Assessment information (i.e. major requirements, main expectations, potential influence in the project, etc.); and Stakeholder classification (internal/external, supporter/neutral/resistor, etc.) (PMBOK Guide 5^th edition, 2013, p. 393-398).