| This is your opportunity to intimately understand the type of relationships you are going to have with your stakeholders and which stakeholder will (and should) take up more of your time. Will they support you? Will they block you? Will they just be a thorn in your side? You need to know how they are likely to feel about and react to your project. You also need to know how best to engage them and how best to communicate with them. |
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All stakeholders are equal, some stakeholders are more equal than others
Remember: Some stakeholders may initially seem to lack interest in your project but then have a habit of sitting up and taking notice of your project the nearer you get to implementation. Stakeholder Management is an ongoing process throughout the project life-cycle so keep abreast of your stakeholder analysis, update it, and change your communications techniques as necessary to ensure that your stakeholders are kept informed to the right level.
Facilitation Methods
There are a number of facilitation methods that can be employed here when engaging your stakeholders for example:
- Public media broadcasts
- One-on-one interviews
- Small focus groups
- Community / ‘Town Hall’ meetings
Select the most appropriate method (or a combination thereof) for the individual/group you are wishing to engage with and try to cover off on the following key topic areas and make your notes in the stakeholder register:
- About the individual and/or group
- Special Interests
- Influence on and around your project environment
- Dependencies they have on their environment
- Critical Time-lines / Risks
- Actions required
Note: Meet as many times are you need to and make sure your stakeholder feels he/she/they have been heard and understood. The time taken to understand your stakeholders will pay dividends further down the track.
In the next post in this Communications Plan series we will look at Prioritising your Stakeholders.
Filed under: PMO, PRINCE2, Templates Tagged: | Communication Plan, PRINCE2, Project Initiation, Project Management, Projects, Stakeholder Analysis, Stakeholder Management, Templates
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[...] On Understanding Your Stakeholders [...]
Great post, Duardo!
You’ve given your readers some great ideas about how to get and keep stakeholders “on board.” One of the real challenges facing project managers is developing influence in a number of spheres. You might be intererested in a piece I wrote entitled, “What to Do When Your Boss Just Doesn’t Get it!” which was posted on Pragmatic Marketing’s newsletter this month. The url is http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications.
Hello amazing post we have going here.