In this three-part article series, Natasha Baker examines the stakeholder analysis. In part one she examines project stakeholders. Part two explains the role of the stakeholder analysis in project management, and in the third article she gives examples of stakeholder analysis.
What is a Stakeholder?
Stakeholders are people with a vested interest in the success of the project, whose support, or cooperation is necessary for the project to succeed. Stakeholder buy-in will make the difference in time to complete the project. In some cases, the biggest barrier to project success has been stakeholders.
In project management stakeholders are people, groups, or institutions with interests in a project or program. Stakeholders can be customers, the local community, managerial staff, non-managerial staff, a government entity, and both private and public owners (shareholders). It can be virtually anyone as long as that person or group has something to do with the project.
Lets take a general software company, probable stakeholders would be:
- Those responsible for design and development
Stakeholders' Interests, Impact, Priority
Stakeholders can be listed in a table or spreadsheet with their key interests, potential level of project impact, and priority in relation to other stakeholders. Be careful to outline multiple interests, particularly those that are hidden in relation to project goals and objectives.
The key is to keep in mind that identifying interests is done with stakeholders' perspective in mind, not your own. This is difficult as interests are usually hidden and may contradict openly stated aims. Each interest should be related to the appropriate project phase; that is, interests change as the project moves from beginning to ending phases. With some stakeholders it may be crucial to extract interests by formally asking them questions such as:
- What are your project expectations?
- How do you benefit from successful project completion?
- Which stakeholders do you believe are in conflict with the project interests?
Once major interests are identified, it is also useful to outline how the project will be impacted if these are or are not met. In most cases, a simple annotation of positive (+), negative (-), or unknown (?) can be used as well as high (H), medium (M), low (L), or uncertain (?).
Summary
You should now have a more precise list your project's stakeholders. At this point their importance, interests, and impact on the project should be clearly identified and analyzed. In part two, I will explore the role of the stakeholder analysis in project management.
Examples of Stakeholder Analysis
In this three-part article series, Natasha Baker examines the stakeholder analysis. In part one she defines the term stakeholder analysis. Part two explains the importance of a stakeholder analysis in project management, and in the third article she gives real-life examples of stakeholder analysis.