PMI CAPM – Identify and Engage Stakeholders in a Project Part 2

3. Plan Stakeholder Management

As with all knowledge areas, stakeholder management is no different that we need a plan. So this process is planning stakeholder management. It’s a plan which will address how do we identify, manage and engage stakeholders. So this is 13 two in the Pinbox plan stakeholder Management where we are developing management strategies for stakeholder engagement. It’s an analysis of stakeholder needs and it helps us to create a clear plan, a clear intention of how will we manage stakeholders. Let’s look at our edo here. For this planning process we need the project management plan, the Stakeholder register enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets, tools and techniques, expert judgment meetings and then analytical techniques.

You get two outputs here the Stakeholder management plan and project document update planning stakeholder management expert judgment was one of our tools and techniques. So who could be an expert here? Senior Management your project team members, different resources in your organization, the stakeholders that you already know, they can help you identify other stakeholders and understand what other stakeholders will be concerned with in your project. So that will help you create a management strategy, the project managers that you know in your organization and then subject matter experts you may work with and any regulatory bodies or non government agencies that you have to interact with and provide information to and work with on your project and your discipline.

When we think about stakeholder engagement, there are five levels of stakeholder engagement. The first one is unaware, they don’t even know you’re doing a project so they’re totally unaware of your project. So they’re not engaged at all. Then you have resistant where people don’t want your project to happen, they don’t like it, they’re a negative stakeholder. They’d be happy if your project just went away. They’re neutral, I don’t care about whatever, if it’s great, if it’s successful, good for you. If it’s not, doesn’t affect me any.

That’s like an inspector or those people in procurement where they’re neutral towards your project, they’re not emotionally involved, supportive are people that they want your project to be successful, they’re happy that it’s there and good job and get it done. Leading though are people that are like champions or cheerleaders for your project. Not only are they supportive but they’re really excited about it and they’re going out and telling other people about it and why this is a good thing and so they are on your side. 100% project sponsor you hope is leading.

So this creates the stakeholder management plan. The point of this plan, as you see there are several is first off, what is our desired engagement level, supportive and leading and what’s our current engagement level? So do we have a lot of work to do to win people over or are we going to be maintaining that supportive and leading status? What’s the scope and the impact of change to stakeholders? What’s our identified interrelationship among stakeholders and what overlaps do we have what are our communications requirements? So back to chapter ten in the pinbox with communications planning, what information will we distribute to stakeholders? What’s the reason for the distribution? So why are we doing that?

And what’s the time frame and the frequency for the distribution of the required information? That’s it. That is creating the stakeholder management plan. As you can see, this is a really short process. It’s an involved process, but it’s pretty direct. It’s pretty obvious what we’re doing here. We want people to feel buy in to our project. We want people to be supportive or leading of our project. As you can also see, this has a lot of ties to chapter ten where we talked about out communications management, because who are we communicating with? Our stakeholders. All right, good job. Let’s keep moving forward.

4. Manage Project Stakeholder Engagement

Our next process is the actual management of stakeholder engagement that we want to keep stakeholders engaged in the project. You know, what happens a lot in project management is we launch a new project, we have that kickoff meeting, everyone’s excited, they want your project to go and they’re leading and supportive and they’ve bought into the project and then they just kind of fade away. Or the project manager, the project team, they get so invested in doing the work that they forget got to keep people informed and keep them involved and excited that you want to maintain that level of excitement. So that’s what this is about. It’s about managing that stakeholder engagement. This is 13 three in the pinbox.

To manage stakeholder engagement that we are engaging stakeholders as needed in the project. Now, as needed means a regular basis. We need to keep a cadence of communicating with and keeping folks involved and providing information that we want to obtain and confirm and maintain stakeholder commitment. You manage stakeholder expectations, address any potential concerns. You want to squash rumors right away or when people have concerns or they feel threatened by your project, you want to clarify and resolve those issues because you don’t want that to let that fester. It’s only going to bring your project down.

So manage stakeholder engagement is so important. The ETOs for this process we have the stakeholder management plan, our communications management plan, the change log and OPA three tools and techniques, communication methods, interpersonal skills and management skills. Our outputs will be the issue. Log change request, project management plan updates, project document updates and OPA updates. Our methods to engage stakeholders. So communication methods.

So much of this, as I mentioned, is reliant on what we did in chapter ten that you have to get out and talk to people. So your communication methods and you think about all the different ways that you can communicate with people. One of the most important aspects of this is to have a regular cadence. So if every week you’re going to send out a status report and maybe monthly, you do like a project information report but do it on a regular scheduled basis.

So communication method, this is also talking about not only written communication but face to face. Face to face is so important that is the most effective way to communicate is face to face. Some other methods here to consider interpersonal skills that you want to build trust with your stakeholders. Resolve conflict. There’s a problem, you go immediately to the problem. You don’t ignore it. You do active listening where you are really understanding and involved in the conversation. And your goal is to overcome a resistance to change.

If you’ve ever worked at it or you’ve done some type of a change project where you’re moving from one application to another, there’s going to be some resistance to that. So some people are just going to be emotionally tied to that. Previous solution, whether it’s an upgrade or a whole new piece of software or computer. So you have to show people and sell people on why we need to make this change and why it’s good for them and good for the organization.

This also has some management skills that your goal is to facilitate consensus, that you want people to agree and accept that this is a good decision for this project to exist. You’re influencing people. You’re going to negotiate some agreements. So you’re working with stakeholders, but sometimes you’re working between stakeholders where there are competing objectives. So you have to negotiate some agreements. And this is one of my favorite lines, that is sometimes you have to modify organizational behavior to accept project outcomes.

What a nice way to say, if you don’t like it, that’s too bad. If you don’t like the outcome of a project, it’s too bad. And here’s why you’re going to like it. Maybe not quite that bluntly, but you want to modify their behavior. In other words, you’re going to sell them on this solution. All right, that brings us to the end of this lecture. Next, we’ll talk about controlling your stakeholder engagement. We’ll talk about that in just a moment.

5. Control Stakeholder Engagement

Our next process is to control stakeholder engagement. Keeping stakeholders engaged in the project is one of our ongoing goals as a project manager. So this is 13 four in the pinbox. Control stakeholder engagement. We’re monitoring our overall stakeholder relationships. We’re making certain that we have a good relationship with our stakeholders, that we’re communicating with our stakeholders and keeping them involved and keeping them with a sense of ownership and some buy in to what we’re trying to accomplish in the project.

As the project moves along, we may have to adjust our stakeholder management strategies. People’s opinions can change about your project. You might have to update your stakeholder management plan based on what’s happening in the project. So basically, your approach to stakeholder management will evolve as the project evolves. So this means member and control. It’s done in tandem with execution and it can cause us to go back to planning.

So if needed, we can go back and update our stakeholder management plan. The ETOs here for Control Stakeholder Engagement, we have the project management plan, the issue log, work performance data and project documents, our tools and techniques, information management systems, expert judgment and meetings, our outputs, work performance, information change request, project management plan updates, project document updates, and OPA updates.

The main activity that we’re doing here is actively engaging stakeholders, that we want stakeholders to have a sense of ownership. It’s so important to develop synergy, to develop relationships with our stakeholders because that doesn’t just help us in our current project, it’s going to help us in other projects as well when we have to deal with those people again. So we’re developing some of that reference power that we saw back in chapter nine in HR. So to actively engage stakeholders, we’re going to rely on that information management system. Got to make sure we know what we’re talking about. When we engage stakeholders, we’re going to use expert judgment.

Got to go out and meet with people, meet with stakeholders, don’t ignore your stakeholders. And the last point, probably one of the most important points of this whole chapter is to be honest and direct with project news. People appreciate honesty and they appreciate directness. Don’t be coy and dance around the topic. Don’t you hate that when someone does it to you?

So it’s the same thing when we engage our stakeholders, that we want to be honest and direct. That’s it. That’s the new module in the Pinbox. So it’s not real huge, but there’s a lot of great information in this module. So I would encourage you to go through this again to really pay attention to some of these terms, to think about how can you engage and maintain that engagement with our stakeholders.

In the next lecture is another learning game. So you’re going to hop out and do this little learning game. A good brain break here, and then we’ll move on to our last section in this course, talking about some code of ethics. I’ll see you in just a few minutes.

6. Section Wrap

Great job. You reached the end of this new knowledge area on stakeholder management. We begin our conversation talking about identifying stakeholders, how you got to get out there in the project and identify people quickly and early and get them involved. You don’t want to overlook stakeholders. If you skip over stakeholders, you know they are not going to be happy with you and they find out about their project. So you’re going to have even more work to overcome. So get stakeholders identified and documented in the stakeholder registry early in the project.

So one of the ways that we can do this is to get out and talk to known stakeholders and ask them, is there anybody else that should be involved in this conversation or this project? So get out and talk to people and then we can begin to classify stakeholders. Maybe we had interest, influence and involvement to classify people. It also helps us to identify our key stakeholders, decision makers, management roles or customers.

So anyone that can really have an influence on our project is a key stakeholder. The three grids I wanted you to look for, right, you got this power, interest, Power, Influence and Influence impact grids where we look at the power in relation to the interest, influence or impact. And that tells us, should we manage them closely, should we keep them satisfied, keep them informed or monitor? And no, there’s not another square down here that says ignore. So I’m sorry, it has to be one of these four choices in the grid.

Know those for your exam, recognize the characteristics of those for your exam. As part of stakeholder analysis, we created a stakeholder management plan, which was all about what’s our current level of engagement and what’s our desired level of engagement for stakeholders. What’s the scope and the impact of change of the project? We have to see things from the stakeholders point of view. Are they upset about this change? Are they scared of it? Do they have a perceived threat? It’s not a legitimate threat. So we have to see things from the stakeholders perspective and then that helps us just to better plan and analyze stakeholders and then it helps us to manage that engagement better.

So we want to engage stakeholders as needed throughout the project. So we obtain, confirm and maintain stakeholder commitments to the project, manage stakeholder expectations, address concerns, get them involved. So we talked about different ways of engaging stakeholders. Communication methods, interpersonal skills, management skills.

We got to get out there and actively engage people that people want to be told good or bad, just be honest with me about what’s happening. Okay, good job. We have reached the last chapter in the Pinbox. A few more things to knock out in this course, but we’re getting really close to being done and I’m really happy that you’re sticking with it. Let’s keep moving forward. You can do this.