What's your one top tip for stakeholder management?
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
I'm giving a presentation to a group of new project managers soon and I would like to share some top tips from experienced pros about how to manage stakeholders. What advice would you give?
Especially if someone is new to an organisation, I highly recommend carrying out a traditional stakeholder analysis exercise at the start of a project and then (most important of all) reviewing the findings of it with the PMs manager and the sponsor. This really helps give an insight into the organisation's politics. Saving Changes...
Gaurav SapraProgram Manager| TATA Consultancy ServicesEdinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Top Tip - Identify your stakeholders. My experience, with complex projects and huge transformations, has been that we get hasty and conclusive while doing the exercise of identification which forms basis for further analysis and actions.
Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
Gaurav, that's certainly true. On one of my very first projects I missed out a major stakeholder - I certainly had egg on my face when the project went live and she didn't know anything about it. Saving Changes...
Winnie LiemSenior Manager Business Experience Practice| Government of OntarioMarkham, Ontario, Canada
Hi Elizabeth, As a Government Project and Portfolio Manager, Stakeholder Mgt is top of my list of important disciplines for PMs to develop. Top Tip for success I find is to take the time to learn the pain points for your key stakeholders (those people who can make or break your project). This can be as simple as knowing which triple constraint the stakeholder is most sensitive to (cost, schedule, scope). If Stakeholder owns key deliverables on the critical path, tightly manage their deliverables. I go as far as listing Stakeholders as "risks" so I can more tightly manage them Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
Thanks, Winnie. I think you have to be careful listing stakeholders as risks, although it's a great idea! Do you list them as a group or individually? Individually would worry me if they ever saw the risk log. But if they are used to working this way then I doubt it would be a problem for them as they'll be used to seeing stakeholders on the log. Do you share the risk log with them? Saving Changes...
Hi to all. Without any doubt identify stakeholders is a must!
But how?
In literature the most used attributes to analyze and prioritize the stakeholders are:
• power,
• legitimacy
• urgency
• proximity
• impact
I think that all this attributes are interesting but how much does it cost in money and time? And more, if I map them in a classical grid (impact/power...) I may find a lot of overlapping figure making not clear the right approach. I suggest to investigate two attributes:
- relationship: what stakeholder thinks of the project manager
- agreement: by what means stakeholder agree with the project and project objectives
and to map this attributes in a linear graphic model to avoid overlapping and to manage clearly the right communication approach. Saving Changes...
You may wish to consider the process as stakeholder management (PMBOK 5) and real tasks to establish relationships to build stakeholder engagement through clear and transparent communication mediums .(face to face, stakeholder meetings, website, email, newsletters, brown bag sessions, surveys, training videos etc.) Saving Changes...
Winnie LiemSenior Manager Business Experience Practice| Government of OntarioMarkham, Ontario, Canada
Hi Elizabeth. To better explain listing stakeholders as risks...I do not actually put them in the risk log. Its primarily about actively managing your project and areas where "things are more likely to go wrong" and my experience tells me that "external stakeholders" (e.g. service providers) may over-promise and under-deliver...so putting them (or their deliverable) on your risk list will help you better manage your projects critical path items and plan for contingency. Hope that clarifies. Saving Changes...
