Stakeholder Integration: 3 Critical Factors

Marcelo A. Briola is an Organizational Project Management Consultant. He has extensive experience in leading complex regional projects, in the implementation of IT management models, and transition and transformation projects. He is Academic Director of the Project Management Executive Program at Torcuato Di Tella University, Project Management Professor for MBA at Belgrano University and at the Professional Council on Economic Sciences of the City of Buenos Aires. He is the author of several research papers on project management and teamwork.

  Communications Management   Stakeholder Management  

Stakeholder integration is vital to achieving project goals since it will maximize collecting all the project definitions and approvals--and will help identify stakeholders’ expectations and needs. The integration itself is directly related to the teamwork concept that involves an optimum work environment: respect among team members, a common goal (in this case, the project’s goal) and team solidarity and cohesion that encourage effective performance and good results. After all, it all comes down to teamwork interaction.

Additionally, integration should be considered an ongoing communication process among the stakeholders. Communication becomes a key variable to achieve effective integration and should be applied through management. From a communication perspective, knowing the number of relationship channels resulting from the total number of stakeholders is essential to determine the level of complexity of the project.

To reach this number, the mathematical formula to be applied is:

n X (n-1)/2

…where “n” is the number of participants in the team or in the environment who should interact.

For example, if there are seven professionals in the team, the number of available channels would be 7 X (7-1) /2 = 21 communication channels. However, each new member added to the team does not imply a new communication channel. …

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