How To Manage Stakeholders’ Conflicts

Agile and Scrum / By

Stakeholder involvement is critical to the success of every project no matter how big or small it is. The more the project manager understands stakeholder influences, expectations, and impacts, the easier it is to manage all the issues and risks proactively.

The benefits of analyzing the impact of stakeholders are:

  • Identify powerful and influential stakeholders- Seek their input and suggestion, to improve the quality of your project from the very beginning.
  • Try to gain support from influential stakeholders, it can help you to win right set of resources at the right time, increasing the success rate of your project.
  • Ensure that the frequency of your communication and project status report is meeting their requirement.

The project manager should understand the importance of balancing the interest of the various stakeholders. Different stakeholder groups have different objectives, interests and priorities, for example:

  • Sales team and shareholders expectation is profit and revenue generation so that they can receive returns on their investment.
  • Operations team would expect a very good performance, so that they can complete their tasks in lesser time.
  • Marketing team would expect the product to possess all the features, advertised and marketed by them.
  • Employees expects a healthy work environment and projects involving latest technologies so that they can improve their career graph.

Every department have their own interest in the project, it is the responsibility of the project manager to identify whose interest should be given the highest priority and what should be the order of priorities. The primary reason of stakeholder conflict is when the needs of some stakeholder groups compromise the expectations of others. In such cases business has to make the choices basis company’s procedures and policies. For example in an insurance company the priorities are in the order

  1. Regulatory/ legal requirement
  2. Revenue generation
  3. Customer Satisfaction
  4. Performance enhancement
  5. Employee satisfaction

Stakeholder analysis is very important and this can be done by creation of stakeholder engagement matrix. As per PMBOK fifth edition the engagement levels of stakeholders can be classified.

  • Category 1- Unaware: Unaware of the project & potential impact, can be taken lightly.
  • Category 2- Resistant: Aware of the project & potential impact, but resistant to change, can be given low priority.
  • Category 3- Neutral: Aware of the project, yet neither supportive nor resistant, can be taken lightly but cannot be ignored.
  • Category 4- Supportive: Aware of the project & potential impact and supportive to changes, should be given high priority to continue to get the desired support.
  • Category 5- Leading: Aware of the project & potential impact and actively engaged in ensuring the project is a success, must be given highest priority and to be taken very seriously.

It is project manager’s responsibility to understand how to deal in case of conflict among the stakeholders. If the conflict is between stakeholder from category 1 with category 4 or 5 so you know what to do and whom to satisfy. But if the conflict is between 1 and 2 or between 1 and 3, then you need to educate the stakeholder of category 1 about the project and its impact, so that he is in sync with other stakeholders. And if the conflict occur between category 4 and 5 then you should refer to your organization’s priority list, legal and regulatory requirements always takes precedence followed by revenue generation. This can vary from organization to organization, as a project manager your primary responsibility is to fulfil the goals and objectives of your company. So you need to handle the conflicts keeping all these factors into consideration.

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

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