Stakeholder Icebreakers

  ProjectsAtWork  

These inquiries are not idle cocktail chatter, but critical starting points for your project.

Want to really understand your stakeholder's goals? Ask the "Nine Golden  Questions," says Russell Barnes, PMP, an executive project manager at IBM Global Learning Services in Dallas. Distilled from Barnes' 37 years of experience, the questions are designed to elicit the essence of a project from the stakeholder's POV. 

The best time to ask the questions is before the project charter is written, Barnes says. And the best format for the discussion is a one-on-one meeting between you and the senior executive requesting the project.

"The questions are deceptively simple to ask, but profoundly difficult to answer," Barnes says. "But the answers are the framework the project manager must use to pull the project together."

Barnes emphasizes that the questions are not meant to supersede project management discipline but to support it. He says the answers are a bridge between project conceptualization and structured project management processes.  

"Once you get the answers, you must embrace your own project management methodology to carry you forward," he says.

The Nine Golden questions are:

1. What is the business problem, …

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