Projects are like trains rolling down the tracks - Once they are put in motion and they are hard to stop. Stakeholder communication is one of the project manager's most important jobs because the stakeholders define the success of a project. The stakeholders must be identified, actively managed, and communicated with to ensure their buy-in to the final product, or else … [Read more...]
How to Develop a Stakeholder Engagement Plan
A Stakeholder Engagement Plan is a formal strategy to communicate with project stakeholders to achieve their support for the project. It specifies the frequency and type of communications, media, contact persons, and locations of communication events. It is created at the beginning of the project and updated frequently as stakeholder communication needs change. Parts … [Read more...]
Guide to Stakeholder Engagement
All projects have stakeholders. Like any area of life, no projects exist inside of a bubble. Although some come close, every project must have a project sponsor (as a minimum) who created the project and expects some sort of deliverable. But most projects have so many stakeholders that they must maintain a list in order to manage them all properly. In project … [Read more...]
What is a Stakeholder in Project Management?
In project management, a stakeholder is anyone who is affected by the project. This can be a real or perceived effect. Some are supportive and some are opposed to the project. Some have alot of influence and some have a little. Some are easy to persuade and some are not. But they all have a "stake" therefore project success and stakeholder management are integrally … [Read more...]
The Parts of a Stakeholder Register
In project management, a stakeholder register is a document that lists a project's stakeholders as well as information about their involvement in the project. In the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), a stakeholder register is an output of the Identify Stakeholders process within the Project Stakeholder Management knowledge area. As a minimum, a … [Read more...]
Stakeholder Identification Techniques
It is surprisingly easy to forget about a minor project stakeholder who then exercises a disproportionately large influence on the project's success after they feel like they haven't been adequately consulted. It happens on countless projects every day. For this reason, project stakeholder management is used to obtain, or maintain, stakeholder support for the project. … [Read more...]
Who Decides if a Project is a Success?
Project success criteria are sometimes fickle and elusive things. On paper, the budget and schedule feature prominently in every project. After all, a project is defined as a temporary endeavor to create a unique product or service. But most projects have a host of other criteria, like product quality, third party stakeholders, or end user evaluation results. And to … [Read more...]
How to Perform a Root Cause Analysis
You have a malfunction. Or your project ran into problems. Or your plant's production has fallen. There could be one main reason, or several reasons for the negative event. There could be a chain of events which was initiated by a root cause. How do you decipher the complex web of events which culminated in the negative outcome? You need a … [Read more...]
Guide to Requirements Management
Many projects have a long list of requirements, from product features to design standards to quality metrics. Each of these requirements originated from a stakeholder, manager, or company policy. To make matters difficult, the stakeholder often can't even articulate their requirements or how they would like it implemented into a solution, or company policies … [Read more...]
How to Perform a Cost Benefit Analysis
A cost benefit analysis is a project selection method in which a common metric is used to compare a project's costs and the benefits it provides. It is used in public projects (like road building) or projects where the end product is not purely monetary. The cost benefit analysis is performed by computing the net present value of the project with the net present … [Read more...]