Stakeholder Management Processes and Pointers

When it comes to projects, there will always be those who’re more invested, excited and prepared than others. Regardless of your situation, some of the greatest assets and liabilities which will be evident throughout your project will be the other stakeholders involved. Management of these personnel will either make or break the project with which you will be involved.

Stakeholder management involves several key components many of which often come naturally in any business or project decision. However, the mapping of processes–like what occurs in nearly any project–will help to clarify the who, what when, where, why and how of the project so as to ensure more rapid success.

Identify and Connect

Finding the stakeholders is very difficult, but you’ll almost never be able to find that for which you are unaware. Mapping out your stakeholders includes time for identifying those who’ll be most desperately needed for your project. Sometimes those involves will seem to have little involvement at the outset, but their decisions will have lasting effects down the road.

Once you have identified key management and input personnel, it is essential that such individuals are not only contacted but brought in for initial discussions and preparation for the project. During this project planning process, you may find some individuals will become frustrated or even annoyed, but understanding who each stakeholder is and what they bring to the table along with where they fit in the value chain will be of utmost importance. In many cases, it helps to identify who the emergency contact is during critical moments through the project timeline. If nothing else, this gives you a pulse on who to call when something goes wrong, for things certainly will.

Mapping

Project mapping can often be treated lightly, but once you have key stakeholders in place, a lack of mapping can take key individuals off track from the original goal. Creating and informing key individuals of your project’s map will be extremely helpful for ensuring the project goes off without a hitch.

Monitoring and Review

When progress is measured, it improves. When progress is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement increases.

Feedback for each stakeholder not only allows for improvement, but also gives a way for you as the manager to see where holes may occur in your current processes. While monitoring and project review can often seem mundane and sometimes progress is slow, not doing so ensures that almost nothing will be done to improve or change over the course of time.

Your projects may prove difficult, but ignoring the stakeholders could be the most detrimental toward the success of your endeavor. Get them involved early and often and keep them in the loop for key milestones. You’ll be glad you did.