Identifying and managing stakeholders to a project

to the project.
Stakeholders are those people or institutions that are affected by the outcome of a project, either in a negative or in a positive way.
Proponents and opponents to a project are therefore stakeholders, but many of these will take no direct part in the project as team members, but will have their roles and responsibilities changed as a result of executing the project.
Primary stakeholders are those individuals who are directly affected by the project and will be internal to the organisation, such as users and managers.
In addition to primary stakeholders, there are external stakeholders, such as suppliers, legal bodies and other third party organisations who are not formally involved in a project, but may impact or be impacted by the activity.
Stakeholder Analysis – It is the objective of stakeholder analysis to identify key participants in the project, the relative power or influence they possess, and their attitude towards the project.
Whilst the stakeholders identified from this process are likely to share similar views on the need to achieve a broad set of objectives, their approach and time scale for achieving this, is likely to be a potential source of conflict.
Understanding each stakeholder’s position and stance in the project will undoubtedly, be an important activity as it is likely that their consent or finance will be needed at some point during the project.
The influence exerted by every stakeholder in the project can be determined from the assessment of the following factors:
l Is he or she positive towards the project?
l Is he or she negative towards the project?
l Are they not committed one way or the other?
l Is he or she a decision-maker?
lIs it an individual whose consent is required for the project to succeed?
The successful project manager will have the ability to design a stakeholder importance/influence matrix that dovetails with the nature of the project, without being a Robin Hood in the process.
Project Key Stakeholders
According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) guidelines, key stakeholders to any project are as follows:
l Project Sponsor
l Project Manager
l Customer/User
l Performing organisation
l Project Team Members.
l Project Management Team
l Project Influencers
l Project Management Office (optional)
In addition to these key stakeholders it is necessary to perform a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technical, Legal, and Environmental) analysis to uncover other external stakeholders in these categories and society at large.
The importance of identifying project stakeholders and analysing their influence cannot be overstated, as it is necessary to do so especially at the onset of a project.
The tollgate project took longer than anticipated because there was no enabling legislative instrument to fully implement the project. This is a typical example where project stakeholders from the legal domain were not identified early in the project.
Despite identifying the project stakeholders and their influences, the project manager must deal with stakeholder resistance to change to be brought about by the project, which is heavily influenced by environmental and cultural factors.
Project Stakeholder Resistance
Resistance to change can take many forms within a project and it is important to identify it as soon as possible and take appropriate action to resolve it.
Stakeholder resistance can take many forms, but the more popular examples are likely to include:
Continually asking for more detail before making a decision or disseminating so much detailed information to the project team, no one has a chance of understanding it and making a decision based upon it. Others include assuring others the project is important, yet never allocating any time to it. Communicating the need for realistic solutions but dismissing every proposal as unrealistic and impractical disregarding serious project issues – responses such as “I am not surprised”, effectively deflates the importance of the message
“Head in the sand” attitude towards bad news, often demonstrated by the display of aggression towards the messenger or staying silent, implying that consent has not been given.
The whole decision-making process within a project can be brought to a halt by a stakeholder who unwilling to provide positive affirmation, refusing to commit staff and resources in the project, either because they are too busy or because the project is not seen as having a higher priority than their current business assignments.
The diversity of stakeholders coupled by the resistance to change by some of them surely lead to conflicts on projects.
Project Stakeholder Conflict
At every project twist and turn, conflicts can happen without warning signs, in IT projects, there are many situations throughout the project where the likelihood of conflict will be high, yet the warning signs will not be so obvious.
A contemporary view of conflict within projects suggests that far from being a bad thing, conflict is necessary, and indeed a necessary event. That may well be the case, but for the purposes of achieving project success, it is important to understand the key causes of conflict and possible ways to resolve it. Some of the causes of conflict on projects are as follows:
Conflicting objectives among key project stakeholders.
Excessive controls exerted by the project sponsor – problems arise if the project sponsor undermines the leadership and authority of the project manager. Make-or-break decisions taken independently of the project sponsor.
Dealing with Project Stakeholder Conflict & Resistance
Project stakeholder conflict and resistance is almost always characterised by the lack of effective communication, such as stalling tactics and information overload.
The best approach to overcome such resistance and conflict is to employ the principles of effective communication. In particular, it is important to understand both verbal and non-verbal signals from the stakeholder.
The project manager must be warned against using the “one medium/message-fits-all” approach as it is reminiscent to an artisan who has a hammer as his only tool and sees everything as a nail to be hammered into place.
This does not work, as project stakeholder information requirements are different.
The “who, what, when, where, why, and how” questions regarding project information must be answered by the project manager before the information is dispatched to the stakeholder.
l Robert Taruwona is the president of PMIZ. Send your views & comments via email; [email protected] website link www.pmiz.org.zw