Chapter 5. Stakeholder Management
5.4 Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
- Stakeholders are those who have a positive or negative influence on the project, or who are or might be positively or negatively affected by the project, or its activities, decisions, and outcomes. Stakeholders can be anyone including, but not limited to, individuals, groups, teams, businesses, corporations, communities, government agencies, not-for-profit organizations, international bodies, and non-governmental organizations.
- The stakeholder power/interest grid is a two-dimensional matrix with four quadrants. It helps project leaders categorize stakeholders and create effective communication strategies for each category of stakeholder on the project.
- Stakeholder register provides a snapshot about all the stakeholders in terms of their power and interest levels, current and required support levels, risk ratings, their relationship to other stakeholders, issues and concerns, and engagement strategy and tactics to keep them supportive of the project or keep their resistance in a very low level.
- One of the common responsibility assignment matrices is the RACI (responsible, accountable, consult, and inform) chart which is a useful tool to ensure clear assignment of roles and responsibilities when the team consists of internal and external resources.
- The project manager’s interpersonal skills are needed especially while communicating with the stakeholders. Project managers must rely on their soft skills to be effective. Effective project manager spends a significant amount of time building relationships with stakeholders. It is of high importance for a project manager to obtain, confirm, or maintain stakeholders’ commitment to the success of the project.
