Anne OnufrykPersonal development Coach and trainer| Anne OnufrykEnglesqueville La Percée, France
Stakeholders engagement must be very high on the Project Manager's priority list. It must be measured by the responsiveness and the contribution to the project - lack of stakeholder engagement will have an immediate negative effect on project resources and project success. The best way to manage it is face-to-face.
The stakeholder analysis must be used to build the communication plan (determine groups, frequency, means of communication). In a current conversation on this topic in the PMI group on LinkedIn, someone wrote that communication can only be considered as such if it is both ways. Meaning that you always have to have a response back from your stakeholders. I liked this comment. Just making a post is not a communication. It is a task for a project resource to get the communication plan updated. It is usually part of a change management stream of your project.
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Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
Continuous and ongoing dialogue between stakeholders and the project team is the best way, in my experience, to build good working relationships. That just means involving them in decisions, keeping in touch and letting them know how they can help you. Saving Changes...
It is easy to agree with both Elisabeth and Anne. However, PM should adapt to the particular organisational culture and personal communication styles of particular stakeholders and identify ways and means of communication that are most appropriate or suitable for particular stakeholders. Saving Changes...
I agree with all of you. But I think that communication approach could be of two type: linear and interactive. It depends on the budget that the PM can use for communicating because, of course, an interactive communication is much more expansive. Hence the stakeholders must be analyzed and mapped correctly in order to know when and to whom it is necessary to undertake an interactive communication and when and to whom you can use a linear approach. The challenge is exciting and I believe it is not easy to do this without a software that can help the PM monitoring the stakeholders trend. Saving Changes...
Interesting to see a mention of using software, I did consider this on a project that had numerous stakeholders across a number of different organisations. There are some types of Customer Relationship Management software that would work well for recording and managing this, however 2 issues; firstly it was not easy to buy this, for non-cloud solutions you have to engage with their sales teams & have meetings & so on just to get a price, and secondly this software does not, of course, actually do any of the communication for you.
Instead I adopted an approach using a number of methods, including 1:1 meetings, conference calls, newsletters, talks at conferences, leaflets & flyers, and using social media. The latter was particularly interesting, it certainly is worth considering for accessing many groups of people, although it definitely does exclude some too. Saving Changes...
Agree with everyone, stakeholders engagement and communication is definitely integral and crucial part of Project Management which really need to be modified/updated depending upon Stakeholders expectation, requirements, constrains, delivery type, delivery date and the project team. Regular communication and inputs from both stakeholder and project team is essential and weekly or bi-weekly (depending upon project requirement) face to face meeting is helpful as it provides common platform to share concerns, expectations, issues and discuss solution. In case of geographical constraints V-con or T-con may fill the gap since two way communication is always effective. From project delivery point perspective It’s really helpful if both stakeholders and project team are on the same page. Saving Changes...
Aryamer BasrahProject Manager| PT Vale Indonesia TbkKab Luwu - Soroako, South Sulawesi, Indonesia
Not all stakeholders in the same opinion to a specific project. It is a challenge to the project manager in how to communicate and negotiate to a certain holder(s) in an opposite position to get a win-win solution.
I just want to note that a negotiation and communication skill is very important to project manager.
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Sylvain CostyCIO| Handball French FederationDraveil, France, France
Hi Everyone. Stakeholders communication is a very sensitive topic on a project. As a project manager, we should relly take care of this aspect and as we say, 90% of the job of a project manager is communication. So, it's very important to well know the different stakeholders involved in the project and essentially their impact on the project, regarding their interest and their power on the decisions made during the project. Se we should identify and define a stekeholders matrix with the means and freuency used to communicate. Some stakeholders just need a montly report by mail, some others need a weekly debriefing by phone... So, we really need to know our stakeholders and create an effective way of communication. Saving Changes...
ROBERTO CARLANDOArchitect| Studio Architect Roberto CarlandoMilan And Trieste, Italy
I agree with all of you.
The most important thing in the project management is the communication, and there are two approach the linear one and the interactive one.
We should identify and define a stakeholders matrix with the means and frequency used to communicate.
The stakeholder analysis must be used to build the communication plan (determine groups, frequency, means of communication), what say to who and how to say it.
It is important to communicate and negotiate to all holders.
But It is important also to verify how many holders there are in a stakeholder.
For example:
if we need to project and build a new residential building in areas with environmental restrictions, we of course need to verify how many stakeholders with whom we have to interact:
- Customer;
- Municipal technical department;
- Technical offices health (ASL);
- Office regulations of firefighters;
- etc.
But we also to verify how many holders there are in each stakeholder, in fact (for example) in the municipal technical department there are :
- Municipal technicians;
- His area director;
- Head of the Technical office;
- Commission landscape for environmental impact assessment;
- Technical Administrative Office for the calculation of infrastructure costs/charges.
Many times in the same Municipal technical department, the offices that I mentioned before have different ideas and interpretations of the standards or different ideas about the impact landscape of the project; sometimes they are in contrast each other.
This is caused by the complexity of public administration, especially in Italy and less Europe, much less abroad.
So we must to interact face-to-face with all of them to succeed! Sometimes we should interact in sequence and sometimes simultaneously, and we need harmonize contrasts in the same stakeholder, and negotiate a good result.
Unfortunately this work is independent of the budget that the Project Manager can use.
So the PM must make sure to use budget enough to do it, or He should ask enough money to overcome any obstacle of stakeolders.
To manage and control the stakeholders we should create a "stekeholders matrix" and a "tree diagram" with the means and frequency used to communicate with each stakeholder and with each “sub-holder”.
The "tree diagram" shows the interactions between the holders that we have to check, with whom we interact individually and the holders that should interact each other. Saving Changes...
Aejaz ShaikhPM I| Alyx Technologies India Pvt LtdPune, Maharshatra, India
Essential is to know the objectives of the engagement and communication. As the objective will help in managing the various stakeholders. One decide the communication is relevant or irrelevant, will help in better results coming out of the communication. All communication of all the stakeholder needs to be governed by the objectives only, else a lot of unnecessary communication will happen and this may give rise to queries, clarification which are not aligned to the objective. I suggest the following:
- Communication should be aligned with the objective.
- Moderator to control the communication.
- Note the relevant questions and good points coming out of the discussion.
- Summarize the discussion at the end. Saving Changes...
