A project is the result of multiple people working together. Even if you are in charge of managing the project, you will still need to rely on other people, collaborate with them, and report back to them for the project to be successful. As you know, there are a lot of individuals involved in getting a project from concept to implementation and these individuals are called project stakeholders. But what precisely does that mean? What impact do your stakeholders have on the project? And how can you keep them satisfied?
What is a Project Stakeholder? #
Project stakeholders is any individual, group, or organization that have the potential to either influence the project or be affected by it. To put it simply, project stakeholders are those who will be impacted by your project at any stage of the project life cycle, and their involvement can have a direct effect on the final result.
Identifying Your Project Stakeholder #
Examples of Key Project Stakeholders #
The project stakeholders will vary by type and industry, but below are some examples:
- Customers or clients
- Project manager
- Project team members
- Sponsors of the project
- Suppliers
- Consultants
- Vendors
- Executives
- Resource managers
- Consumers / end-users
Types of Project Stakeholders #
When it comes to project management, identifying both internal and external stakeholders will enable you to more effectively execute your project planning. This will help you to guarantee that each and every stakeholder is properly informed all through the project and is pleased with the end result.
1. Internal Stakeholders #
Individuals that are considered internal stakeholders are those who are already a part of your organization. The top management, members of the project team, your own boss, colleagues or coworkers, a resource manager, and internal customers can all be considered internal customers.
2. External Stakeholder #
External stakeholders are individuals or organizations that are not a part of your organization. Examples of external stakeholders include clients from the outside, agencies, contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers.
5 Tips To Effectively Manage Your Project Stakeholders #
One part of managing your stakeholders is to figure out who they are and what they need. But your job does not end there! For your project to be a success, you should keep your key stakeholders’ needs, project goals, and happiness in mind throughout the whole project life cycle!
To collaborate on a project, it is vital to conduct effective stakeholder management and maintain open lines of communication. And here’s how you do it!
1. Mapping your stakeholders #
You need to define your project stakeholder and then mapping out your stakeholders, through 2 steps of project stakeholder analysis; identify, prioritize them based on the power and interest grid.
Identify project stakeholder #
It’s important to have a complete list of all of your project stakeholders, including internal and external, in order to ensure that your project is on track. Keep in mind that some of the project’s stakeholders won’t become relevant until much later and can begin to gain their buy-in, create a relationship with them from the beginning, and assist them in feeling included right from the start of the project.
Prioritize the project stakeholder #
After identifying your stakeholders, you can start to prioritize them. In order to know where to allocate your resources, it’s critical to rank or prioritize the importance of the various stakeholders in your organization. It helps the project manager identify important decision makers so they may talk to the appropriate people at the right time.
The power-interest grid lets you identify your important stakeholders by answering two crucial questions.
- Power level: How essential is their satisfaction with the project? How important are they to the project? How influential are they on the project, stakeholders, team, etc.? Remember, the influence can be positive or negative.
- Interest level: What’s their interest? Is this project really vital to them or tangential? Are they responsible? Are they dependent on it? They opposed the project?
2. Shared mutual objectives for project #
During the initial stage when you conduct kick-off meetings with your internal team or with clients, make sure that you have the understanding of project’s background, project’s objective and have the same expectation of project scope, project deliverable, etc.
3. Document the roles and needs of all stakeholders #
After spending time identifying who your project stakeholders are and their specific needs, you shall gather this information into a shareable, accessible document to ensure that you have documentation of everyone’s job and duties and to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
4. Keep your stakeholders informed #
As a project manager, one of your primary responsibilities is to keep stakeholders informed, involved, and motivated all throughout the project’s life cycle. Your priority stakeholders will likely change based on the period of the project. That’s a good thing, since it allows you to focus your efforts where they’re needed and prevent overwhelming individuals with unnecessary information.
This is significant because, although you want to provide visibility to your stakeholders, over-communication may be just as unpleasant as under-communication.
5. Give the visibility of the project #
Provide project stakeholders with visibility into what is important to them. By establishing customized Project Dashboards, you can assist each stakeholder in filtering out irrelevant data and gaining rapid insight into the KPIs that are most essential to them.
Construct personalized Dashboards with FoxPlan to track the team management: tasks assignment, status of each task, activities of team, project milestones, manage project risks, and more, so your stakeholders can rapidly see how various aspects of the project are progressing and get a quick summary of the information they care about.
Manage Your Project Stakeholder Better with FoxPlan #
Always include your stakeholders throughout your project, from start to end by communicating frequently, keeping them informed and interested, and ensuring that they feel appreciated and listened to.
Using FoxPlan project management solution is a wise choice as it allows you to tailor your project dashboard with specific KPIs of each stakeholder needs, while also helping the internal team to manage their resources, manage their project budget, and also monitor the project closely and provide visibility of the project.
Are you ready to plan your project today with FoxPlan? Subscribe FoxPlan for Free today or contact us to experience the FoxPlan live demo!