Managing Stakeholder Expectations

Andy Jordan - March 9, 2009

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

Scope Management

Before I start let me say--for the benefit of any stakeholders reading this--that my tongue is planted firmly in cheek. Let me also say that many a true word is spoken in jest. Okay, enough of that, let’s get on with it...

Have you noticed that stakeholders tend to be hard of hearing? You tell them one thing and they hear something completely different. I used to think that this was just a phenomenon with customers, but it’s not--it happens with all stakeholders. You tell them that the project is behind schedule and over budget, and that while you are actively managing the issues you feel that there may be a cost overrun and a delay. But they hear that everything is going fine!

They also make stuff up. If they haven’t seen a status report or been part of a status meeting recently, then there are automatically no issues, no delays and no problems. Finally, they believe in magic. They agree to the scope of the project, they agree that nothing can be changed without going through the change-control process, and yet at the end of the project they expect that a bunch of other feature will have been included.

It’s crazy...how are you supposed to deal with these people? Well, maybe there are a few things we can do.

The hard-of-hearing stakeholder

Stakeholders who hear something different from what is being said probably aren…

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Managing Stakeholder Expectations

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