Help Project Workers Involve These Stakeholders

 

In a recent pair of articles of mine the case was made that organizational governance representatives should be involved more often and earlier in the SDLC. The article did not fully address how to organize your project workforce to make the necessary changes to incorporate representatives from legal, compliance, information security, risk management and similar groups, however. So here are some tips to be successful in this stakeholder management activity.

• Include the stakeholders in your RACI and get their new “early” roles described correctly in that matrix. Double check your description.
• During workforce training for your project, display the RACI to make early involvement of governance roles clear. Explain what is to happen and why.
• Help team leads think through the implications of involving governance stakeholders earlier in the project. Try to allay concerns over delays by describing benefits of fewer issues later in the project. Refer to the articles for more details on benefits.
• Add governance representatives to distribution lists for earlier project communications. When the representatives have questions, the workforce will be prepared to respond.

Prepare your teams to interact effectively with governance stakeholders earlier in the project by helping them know what to expect by phase. You might have to ask the stakeholders themselves what makes sense in the way of early involvement, then transfer that information to your team.

• At requirements gathering, governance stakeholders may want to participate in JAD sessions or other discussions. Or they may prefer to review draft requirements documentation. They may even request to be formal approvers of the business requirements document. Find out and tell the business analyst and other project workers involved.
• Once new business processes are drafted, where applicable, governance stakeholders may want to review them. This will allow them to anticipate better what new compliance steps are needed or what type of governance changes must occur. They may even have specific revisions to the business processes that affect design.
• During design activities, governance stakeholders may want to see wireframes, draft web pages, descriptions of how Personally Identifiable Information will be used, or other artifacts where there are customer impacts. From information like this, governance stakeholders can intervene early to ensure your project remains safe from serious problems later.

Let’s acknowledge that it is going to take plenty of preparation to properly incorporate governance stakeholders earlier in your projects. Keep telling yourself that, as you improve your ability to do this, you improve your performance as a project manager in a way that is meaningful in today’s regulation-sensitive environment. Tell yourself that you are distinguishing yourself as a project manager who is adapting to the needs of the marketplace.