Stakeholder management: Your guide to influencing project outcomes

4. Increased engagement: A well-thought-out stakeholder management plan explains how a project will impact each stakeholder, allowing them to understand how the completed initiative could benefit them in their day-to-day roles. This insight helps get stakeholders engaged, even if they’re already bogged down with daily tasks.

5. Improved insights for project leaders: That increased engagement means stakeholders are more willing to share their perspectives on projects — information that could better shape the project’s direction and the plans for successfully completing it. “It helps you at the very minimum infuse the stakeholders’ knowledge, goals, objectives, and views into what you ought to do,” Wu says.

6. Reduced risk: A clearly developed and executed stakeholder management plan reduces conflict by providing increased role clarity and engagement. It also helps reduce other types of risks to the project’s successful execution, as engaged stakeholders are better able to surface challenges and issues that could present obstacles. “Good stakeholder management is a mechanism to help you identify potential problems earlier rather than later and take the necessary corrective actions to help prevent them from occurring,” Datt notes.

Stakeholder management process and plan

Stakeholder management involves several components, ranging from identifying stakeholders to determining which stakeholder requires what information and when that information is needed. Each component is vital, with one flowing into the next as essential building blocks for developing a strong stakeholder management plan.

1. Identify stakeholders

Project managers should start by conducting a stakeholder analysis to create a list of stakeholders that should be involved in the project. Findings from this analysis should be documented in a stakeholder register and should include the name of the stakeholder, the stakeholder’s current role, the stakeholder’s role in the project, contact information, and their impact on the project’s outcome. Here, stakeholder analysis tools can be used to help identify stakeholders and evaluate their importance to the project’s success.

The stakeholder register is a baseline that sets the tone for all stakeholder communications throughout the project lifecycle. This vital document explains why each stakeholder was selected and what that stakeholder’s purpose is within the scope of the project.

Here’s an example of what a stakeholder register might look like:

2. Identify and document each stakeholder’s role and impact

The stakeholders’ register should identify the role and impact of each stakeholder. To complete this information, you need to not only use the information compiled during the stakeholder analysis but also — ideally — meet with stakeholders to determine what interest they have in the project as well as their influence on its execution and outcome.

3. Prioritize stakeholders

After conducting a thorough stakeholder analysis and documenting each person and their role in the stakeholder register, it’s necessary to prioritize stakeholders based on their required involvement in and expected influence on the project.

Levels of prioritization are as follows:

• High-influence, high-interest stakeholders are stakeholders who play a key role and have a high impact on the success of a project, such as project sponsors or business leaders.
• High-influence, low-interest stakeholders may be secondary leaders who may not currently have a direct interest but can influence the outcome of a project.
• Low-influence, high-interest stakeholders may play more of a mentoring and support role whereby they aren’t directly involved but are capable of either rallying the troops or playing a disruptive role.
• Low-influence, low-interest stakeholders may not have an impact on a project and only have a casual interest in how the project is progressing. These stakeholders could work in other departments not directly impacted by the project.

4. Develop a communications plan for stakeholders

Effective stakeholder management requires comprehensive communication with stakeholders. That communication must involve the appropriate individuals at the right time and it must convey the right information using the appropriate communication channels.

“This should include how to report milestones to make sure all stakeholders are informed, so that if there’s a decision to be made, they have the information they need to make it in a timely manner,” says IT project manager Krista Phillips, a certified Project Management Professional and a regional chapter leader with the Project Management Institute (PMI).

The project communications plan should include:

• A description of the type of communication
• The frequency of communications
• The format (e.g., email, person-to-person, telephone)
• The participants for each type/mode of communication
• Distribution for the communications
• The final deliverables
• The owner of each communication

5. Cultivate mechanisms to gather information from stakeholders

Stakeholder management requires more than communicating project information to stakeholders, Brunsman says. It should also include opportunities for stakeholders to share their perspectives and insights to project managers and their supervisors. “Make sure communication is not a one-way street,” Brunsman advises.

6. Establish a governance structure

The strongest stakeholder management plans include governance to ensure requirements are being met and all participants are contributing as required, Tucker says.

As such, CIOs, their direct reports, project managers, and other leaders should identify mechanisms for verifying and tracking progress against the plan.

Tucker advises the use of the RASCI Matrix, a project management tool for identifying, assigning and overseeing who performs what work. More specifically, it addresses who is Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, Consulted, and Informed.

Stakeholder management best practices

In addition to developing a stakeholder management plan, there are some best practices that can help smooth stakeholder management. Those best practices center around the need for transparency, inclusiveness, clarity, and timeliness.

Transparency: Transparency is critical when managing stakeholders because it helps establish trust. Transparency creates a direct link to a leader’s intentions and helps stakeholders decide whether they want to buy into a project.

Clarity: Strong project leaders develop clear communication and make the complex seem simple. Providing clarity can also keep stakeholders at various levels focused and on task, making it easier for the project to stay on track.

Inclusiveness: Teams are becoming more distributed, making inclusiveness vital. Whether it’s differing opinions, experiences, backgrounds, genders, beliefs, or other factors, inclusiveness means practicing fairness across the board without making concessions for only some stakeholders.

Timeliness: Managing stakeholder management timelines and ensuring timely communication are vital to ensuring effective relationships with all stakeholders involved in a project’s success.