Stakeholders in Project Management

It is imperative for you to identify all stakeholders at the beginning of the project and create a strategy to manage them for the success of your project. It will help you run the project with minimum obstruction because the sooner you identify them; the sooner you can start communication and involve them with your project. With this, they will feel connected to the project, can understand the benefit of your project, and will render support whenever you need it.

Your projects’ success depends on all your stakeholders are happiness.

It may happen that even though you have completed the project and the client accepts all deliverables, the project is not successfully completed because some of your stakeholders are not happy.

Therefore, it is imperative for you to keep all your stakeholders satisfied if you want to complete your project successfully.

Now many questions may arise such as: Who are the stakeholders and what types of stakeholders exist? Whom do you have to satisfy to complete your project successfully?

Therefore, I am writing this blog post to answer these types of questions, and I hope after reading it you will have answers to your queries regarding the project stakeholders.

Stakeholders

According to the PMBOK Guide “A stakeholder is an individual, group, or organization who may affect, be affected by or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project.”

In other words, you can say that a stakeholder is a person, group of people or an organization that has an interest in your project or is affected by its outcome either directly or indirectly; this may include your project team members, project sponsors, your organization members, and people outside of your organization as well.

The stakeholder list may be low if the project is small. However, if the project is large and spread out in a large geographical area, you may have a huge number of stakeholders, which may include communities or the general public.

All stakeholders are not equal; every stakeholder has different requirements and expectations. You should treat every stakeholder according to their requirements and expectations. Failing to do so can jeopardize your project’s success.

If you know every stakeholder, their needs, expectations, and requirements, it will increase the chance of the project’s success. If you miss any important stakeholder, you may face many difficulties in the later stages of the project such as delay in the project, cost overrun, and in the most severe cases, they may terminate the project.

Type of Project Stakeholders

Project stakeholders can be grouped into two categories:

1. Internal Stakeholders
2. External Stakeholders

Internal Stakeholders

Internal stakeholders are internal to the organization. For example:

◈ A sponsor

◈ An internal customer or client (if the project arose due to an internal need of an organization)

◈ A project team

◈ A program manager

◈ A portfolio manager

◈ Management

◈ Another group’s manager internal to the organization (e.g., functional manager, operational manager, admin manager, etc.).

External Stakeholders

These stakeholders are external to the organization. For example:

◈ An external customer or client (if project arose due to a contract)

◈ An end user of project’s outcome

◈ A supplier

◈ Subcontractors

◈ The government

◈ Local communities

◈ The media

Stakeholders can be positive or negative.

A positive stakeholder sees the project’s positive side and benefit from its success. These stakeholders help the project management team to complete the project successfully.

On the other hand, a negative stakeholder sees the negative outcome of the project and may be negatively impacted by the project or its outcome. This type of stakeholder is less likely to contribute to your success of the project.

I have been asked many times whether competitors are negative stakeholders. Please note that competitors are not negative stakeholders because you have to manage your stakeholders proactively to complete your project successfully, but you do not manage your competitors or fulfill their requirements; the objective of your project is not to meet your competitors’ requirements.

In some cases, the general public can be a stakeholder. In this case, it would be impractical to manage the whole population so you will consult their public figures or leaders to understand their requirements and expectations better. Some examples of this type of project are related to mining, the environment, road, rail, dam building, etc.

It is vital for you to identify your project stakeholders at a very early stage of the project.

Some of these stakeholders will have a minimum interest or influence on the project. However, you have to take care of them as well, because no one knows when they will become dominant stakeholders and if the dominant stakeholders will become less influential.