Chapter 13. Stakeholder management: Keeping everyone engaged
Project management is about knowing your audience. If you don’t get a handle on the people who are affected by your project, you might discover that they have needs you aren’t meeting. If your project is going to be successful, you’ve got to satisfy your stakeholders. Luckily, there’s the Stakeholder Management knowledge area, which you can use to understand your stakeholders and figure out what they need. Once you really understand how important those needs are to your project, it’s a lot easier to keep everyone satisfied.
Party at the Head First Lounge (again)!
When we last saw Jeff and Charles in Chapter 10, they were just about to have their grand opening party. How’s that going for them?
Not everybody is thrilled
There were a few people who weren’t quite as enthused about the opening party for Head First Lounge as Jeff and Charles were. Can you use the four Stakeholder Management processes to help them get their party on track?
Understanding your stakeholders
When you think about it, there are a lot of people who have an interest in your project. That obviously includes the sponsor who’s paying for it, the team who’s making it, and the people who will support it. But there are people who aren’t so obvious who have a stake in your project as well. If you don’t pay attention to all of your stakeholders, you could find that you don’t meet their needs, and that can cause your project to run off the rails. The Stakeholder Management processes are here to help you figure out who your stakeholders are, plan how you’ll keep them engaged, and manage your project to keep them satisfied.
Stakeholder Management makes sure you know who you need to engage to keep your project on track.
Stakeholder requirements and expectations sometimes change over the course of the project. Monitor Stakeholder Engagement makes sure you stay on top of those changes and adjust your plans accordingly.
Find out who your stakeholders are
One of the first things you need to do when you start a project is to figure out who your stakeholders are and what you need to do to keep them all in the loop. The Identify Stakeholders process is all about writing down your stakeholders’ names along with their goals, expectations, and concerns in a document called the stakeholder register. Most projects succeed or fail based on how well the project manager knows and manages stakeholder expectations. Writing them down up front will help you to come up with a strategy to identify the people who could impact your project, but still need to be convinced of its value.
How engaged are your stakeholders?
It’s not enough to know who your stakeholders are—you need to understand what motivates them, and what it will take to make the project a success for each of them. That’s where the stakeholder engagement assessment matrix comes in. Jeff and Charles sat down and worked to come up with one for their upcoming party. Here’s what it looked like:
| Stakeholder | Unaware | Resistant | Neutral | Supportive | Leading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeff—HFL employee | Current | Desired | |||
| Charles—HFL employee | Current | Desired | |||
| DJ Tom—HFL employee | Current | Desired | |||
| Adam—Neighbor | Current | Desired | |||
| Mike—Columnist | Current | Desired | |||
| Mark and Laura—party guests | Current | Desired |
there are no Dumb Questions
Q: How do I figure out who all of my stakeholders are?
A: The short answer is: look around. You probably can name the majority of the stakeholders on your project right off the top of your head. You’ll surely know who the sponsor is; you can point to her name right on the charter. Then there’s the team that’s doing the work; you’ll know who they are because you work with them every day. From there, it gets a little harder. Any business partners (like trainers or support people for software packages) that your company has contracted to help out with the project are also stakeholders. Consultants or other vendors you might’ve contracted to help you deliver your product will also be stakeholders. Then you’ll have to think about how the product of your project will affect the rest of your company. Will it change the way people work when it’s complete? How will those people who need to change their work feel about the project if you asked them today? They’re stakeholders, too. If you’re thorough, the list might get pretty long, but it’s much better to think about your stakeholders up front than it is to ignore them. A stakeholder you don’t plan for today could cause a lot of turbulence in your project later.
Q: Explain the point of that power/interest grid again.
A: Different people have different perspectives on your project. Some of them will put a lot of time and effort into making your project succeed, while others will not have the spare cycles to give. And some people might even actively work against your project if they don’t understand it. The power/interest grid is there to help you understand how you should approach the stakeholders for your project. If someone without a lot of power to influence your project doesn’t have the time or the will to help you with it, that’s less of a problem than when someone with a lot of power to affect your project is resistant to it. It’s a tool to help you figure out the best approach to managing all of the stakeholders on your project. It will help you choose the right way to influence the people who can help you succeed.
Q: How do I turn around resistant stakeholders?
A: In many cases, they’re resistant for a good reason. The best approach is really to try to understand why they’re resistant and help them to see the benefits of your project. Many times, stakeholders who are resistant to change have good suggestions that can make the project better in the long run.
Q: What does it mean to have a stakeholder in a leading role?
A: When a stakeholder takes on a leading role, he is actively involved in making sure your project is a success. He may go to meetings and convince others to support the project, and help you to clear any obstacles that might jeopardize your project’s goals. When a stakeholder has a leading role in the project, he has a stake in seeing it succeed. Leading stakeholders are willing to put time and energy into making sure that others support the project.
There are five engagement levels for stakeholders; unaware, resistant, neutral, supportive, and leading.
Managing stakeholder engagement means clearing up misunderstandings
As your project progresses, you’ll need to check in with your stakeholders regularly so that misunderstandings don’t develop. Your job is to help them to take part in the decisions the team is making, so that they can be supportive. When a stakeholder is resistant to change, you’ll need to negotiate with her and understand her resistance so that you can take her perspective into account.
Sometimes a stakeholder you don’t always talk to might have a good suggestion for an improvement that can help the whole team. It’s also possible that there are some facts about the project that the stakeholder hasn’t considered, and you can help him to be better informed. The key to success in Stakeholder Management is being inclusive, and sharing information with everyone who’s impacted by the project’s outcome.
Jeff and Charles didn’t realize that they scheduled their party on the same day as another music event that was happening in the city. The sound engineers needed to bring in extra help to handle both events, and that’s why they were charging a bigger fee. Once you found out what the issue was and communicated it back to the Head First Lounge team, they understood the cost and approved it.
Monitor your stakeholders’ engagement
Now that you’ve got a great framework set up for managing the way your stakeholders interact with your project, you need to monitor those interactions to make sure that everybody stays in the loop. When you run into a problem or find a place where you might be able to bring the project closer to meeting a stakeholder’s goal, you can make course corrections and changes to keep as many of your stakeholders satisfied as possible—and that’s what the Monitor Stakeholder Engagement process is all about.
Once you know what your stakeholders’ requirements are, you can monitor how close or far away your project is from meeting them.
Now you can tell when you need to change the way you deal with stakeholders
Now that you’ve taken a look at all of the data coming from your project, you’re in a better position to tell if you need to make changes to the way you’re managing stakeholder engagement. The outputs from Monitor Stakeholder Engagement are all about making changes to the documents you’ve been using to keep them engaged all along.
Work performance information is the analyzed work performance data, changed from raw data into reports that are understood in context and can be used to make project decisions. Where work performance data was the raw outputs of the various controlling processes, the work performance information is consolidated. Think of work performance data as your raw budget performance data (this month, we’re over budget by $1,000) and work performance information as that data in context (the project budget forecast is currently $10,000 under budget, even though we’re over by $1,000 this month).
Project Management plan updates might be needed as you work with your stakeholders to ensure successful delivery. Your stakeholders might request changes to your overall strategy for any of the knowledge areas you’ve planned as part of your Project Management plan. You’ll need to go back and make updates to those plans if you want to keep everyone in the loop about the change in approach.
Change requests happen as part of controlling stakeholder engagement. What do you do if you find out that one of your stakeholders’ requirements has been missed? You put the change request in as soon as possible.
Project documents updates happen as you work with your stakeholders to monitor and control their engagement. You might find new stakeholders along the way who make you update your stakeholder register. You could also run into issues that need to be added to the issue log. This also includes updates to lessons learned.
Pool Puzzle
Here’s a chance to test your knowledge while getting some insight into how the exam works. Here are seven tasks from the specification PMI created for the PMP exam that have to do with Stakeholder Management with some words or phrases blanked out. Your job is to take words or phrases from the pool at the bottom of the page and place them into the blank lines in the tasks. You may not use the same word or phrase more than once, and you won’t need to use all of them. Can you use everything you’ve learned to reproduce part of the PMP exam specification?
Pool Puzzle Solution
Were you able to figure these tasks from the PMP exam specification? They all have to do with Stakeholder Management. This is a really good way to prepare for the PMP exam, because the exam questions typically don’t use exactly the same wording as the PMBOK® Guide. This puzzle helps you learn to use different wording to describe concepts that will appear on the exam.
It’s party time!
The Head First Lounge party is a big hit! Thanks to your Stakeholder Management skills, Jeff and Charles are the reigning kings of downtown nightlife!
Exam Questions
Matt, the sponsor of a large publishing project, meets with all of the stakeholders on the project to ask for their support in an upcoming testing event. Which engagement level is he displaying?
Unaware
Resistant
Supportive
Leading
Which of the following is not an input to the Plan Stakeholder Engagement process?
Enterprise environmental factors
Organizational process assets
Work performance data
Stakeholder register
You take over for a project manager who has left the company, and realize that there are stakeholders in the project who haven’t been included in any of the status meetings so far. Some upper managers think the project is not going to succeed, and others are actively thinking of canceling it. Which document is the FIRST one that you should create to solve this problem?
Stakeholder register
Status report
Budget forecast
Performance report
In a monthly steering meeting, you ask one of the stakeholders on your project if she has reviewed the latest document updates you’ve made since the last meeting. She says, “I’m not working on that; I’m not even sure what it is.” How would you BEST describe her level of engagement?
Unaware
Resistant
Supportive
Leading
You’re managing a construction project. You created a stakeholder register and Stakeholder Management plan, and now the team is working on the project. You’ve been managing the work, and now you’re looking at the work performance data to keep your stakeholders informed of the status of the project. You’ve discovered a change in the way your stakeholders look at the budget for your project. Which of the following BEST describes the next thing you should do?
Update the risk register to include any changes to risk strategy.
Compare the work performance information against the time, cost, and scope baselines and look for deviations.
Create a change request and update the issue log and Cost Management plan to reflect the approved change.
Hold a status meeting.
Joe, a stakeholder on your project, has been plotted on the power/interest grid as high interest with low power. What’s the BEST approach for managing his engagement?
Make him responsible for a deliverable on the project.
Keep him informed of all of the decisions that might affect the project’s outcome.
Closely manage his requirements and expectations.
Ignore his requirements and expectations, since he doesn’t have the power to affect the project’s outcome.
Which Stakeholder Management process is in the Initating process group?
Manage Stakeholder Engagement
Identify Stakeholders
Plan Stakeholder Engagement
Register Stakeholders
Sue, the sponsor of the industrial design project you’re managing, is plotted on your power/interest grid as high power, high interest. Which is the BEST approach for managing her requirements and expectations?
Keep her informed of all project decisions.
Manage her requirements and expectations closely.
Keep her satisfied by inviting her to all of the team meetings.
Understand her goals and expectations, but don’t do anything with them.
Which is NOT an input of the Identify Stakeholders process?
Agreements
Enterprise environmental factors
Project charter
Project Management plan
Kyle is the project manager of a project that has teams distributed in many different places. One of the stakeholders in his project has asked that all formal communications from the project be shared with all of the teams, regardless of their location. Which of the following is not a tool that Kyle’s team will use to monitor this stakeholder requirement:
Data analysis
Data representation
Meetings
Inspection
Which information is NOT included in the stakeholder register?
Stakeholder name and group
Stakeholder requirements
Stakeholder expectations
Stakeholder deliverables
Which Stakeholder Management process is in the Monitoring and Controlling process group?
Distribute Information
Manage Stakeholder Engagement
Plan Communications
Monitor Stakeholder Engagement
Exam Answers
Answer: D
Since Matt is working to bring other stakeholders to support the project, he’s in a leading engagement role.
Answer: C
Work performance data is an input of some Stakeholder Management processes, but not an input to Plan Stakeholder Engagement.
Answer: A
The stakeholder register is the first thing you need to create here. It looks like some of the upper managers who might be thinking of canceling the project need to have their ideas taken into account. Once you’ve identified them as stakeholders, you can work to bring their perspective into account on your project and include them in project management decisions.
Answer: A
It sounds like this stakeholder is completely unaware of her responsibilities on the project. The next step here is to spend some time bringing her up to speed on what’s expected.
Answer: C
When you look at work performance data and discover a new stakeholder requirement, you’re doing the Monitor Stakeholder Engagement process. Some of the outputs of that process are change requests, project document updates, and Project Management plan updates.
Note
Once you recognize the process that’s being described, try to think of the outputs of the process to figure out which answer is best.
Answer: B
Stakeholders in the low power/high interest quadrant of the power/interest grid need to be kept informed of all project decisions.
Answer: B
Identify Stakeholders is the only process in Stakeholder Management that is part of the Initiating process group.
Note
Flip back to Chapter 3 for a quick refresher on the Initiating process group, now that you’ve studied Stakeholder Management. It’s a good way to review.
Answer: B
Stakeholders in the high power/high interest quadrant of the power/interest grid need to have their expectations and requirements closely managed by the project manager.
Answer: D
The Project Management plan is not an input to the Identify Stakeholders process. Since the Identify Stakeholders process is part of the Initiating process group, the stakeholders are identified as an input to the Planning processes that create the Project Management plan.
Note
It can get confusing because Identify Stakeholders is discussed at the end of the PMBOK° Guide, but it’s part of the Initiating processes and done before you get to the Planning processes.
Answer: D
Inspection is not a tool or technique of Monitor Stakeholder Expectations. (It’s part of Procurement Management.)
Answer: D
Not all stakeholders have deliverables on a project. Some are sponsors, vendors, or others who might be involved in the project but not actually producing deliverables. When a stakeholder does have deliverables that she’s accountable for, she’ll be documented in the Scope Management plan.
Answer: D
Monitor Stakeholder Engagement is the only Monitoring and Controlling process in Stakeholder Management.