Who is a Stakeholder?
A Stakeholder is person, or group, or organization that is impacted by your project.
How do you manage stakeholders?
Stakeholders are very important for your project success and they can make or break your project. You cannot be more than careful while handling stakeholders.
The most important part of stakeholder management is communication with the stakeholders. As an agile team, we have to always think and communicate with stakeholders.
First and foremost we have to classify stakeholders into:
- Internal
- External
- Supporter
- Resister etc.
Stakeholder classification is typically based on the following criteria:
- Impact on the project ( active involvement)
- Influence on the project. ( effect the changes in the project)
Or
- Power
- Interest
Once we have classified our stakeholder, we have to plan how we can handle them. Each stakeholder should be given only the information that is relevant to them. If we provide extra information also then we can spoil our project.
E.g. Sometimes people have very less influence or power but have high interest, maybe because they will directly using the product. Such people are very important for the project and must be actively engaged as they will be able give insight to the product requirements that we may not get from anyone else. Such people should be kept happy and can then be consulted on any issues in understanding we face while development.
Sometimes people with high influence and high power have little or no interest in the project deliverable. They are only bothered about the status of development and changes if any. They though can stop our project any time as they hold the money purse. We need to send them regular status updates and keep them happy.
Principle of Stakeholder engagements
The following are the principles for Stakeholder engagement:
- Get the right stakeholder: Find the right set of people in your company and the client company who are SMEs of the domain you are working. These people will be the busiest people but they will be best assets for your project.
- Cement Stakeholder involvement: We need to make Stakeholder involvement visible and monitored on the project. We can send weekly status reports, Review meetings etc to keep them with us.
- Actively manage Stakeholder interest: This means we take actions to recognize and reward stakeholder involvement like success parties etc.
- Frequently discuss what “done” looks like: We should try and bridge the gap between development and stakeholder expectations. This we can do by understanding the requirements and get from the stakeholder the definition of when he/she will consider the work done.
- Show progress and capabilities: We should give frequent demos and presentations to the stakeholders so that they may know how the project is progressing. This will help keep them interested in the project.
- Candidly discuss estimates and projections: We should try to be realistic to our stakeholders and show them the real picture. We should do this in tactful way so as to not offend them.
As per PMBOK we can classify Stakeholder engagement level as :
- Unaware: the people who are unaware of the project and potential impact. If the Stakeholder is not important then it is ok for us to ignore them , but any influential stakeholder should quickly made aware.
- Resistant: Aware of the project and its impact but is resistant to change. We should try and understand the problem this stakeholder has with the project implementation and try and mitigate his/her apprehension
- Neutral : Aware of the project but neither positive nor negative. These people can be easily turn positive, if we handle them carefully and can become an asset for our project. We should try to invite them to a demo or two.
- Supportive: Aware of the project and its impact and supportive of change. We should continue to send them reports and invite them for demo (major one only) so that they continue to support us.
- Leading: Aware of the project and its impact and actively engaged in ensuring the success of the project. These people need to be kept actively engaged and managed carefully. They should sent report and invited to the demo depending on their impact and Influence level.
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