Friday, September 14, 2012

Stakeholders

Before we proceed to discuss further about projects and project management, lets briefly discuss what stakeholders are:

Stakeholders are those people who are interested in your project in any sense, i.e. either they are impacted by the project or the project is impacted by their interests. Key stakeholders can make or break the success of the project even if all the deliverable are met or the objectives of the project are satisfied. If the key stakeholders on the project are unhappy then no one can be happy.

It is therefore very important for the project manager to identify stakeholders in the project as early as possible and therefore it is done in the Initiation Process group of the project and process name is "Identify Stakeholders".

Project sponsor is the stakeholder, project sponsor is generally an executive in the organization with authority to assign resources and enforce decisions regarding the project. He should be one of those on the escalation path of the project manager.

In addition to above customer, contractors and suppliers are also stakeholders. The project manager, project team, and managers from other departments all are stakeholders.

Many times stakeholders have conflicts amongst their interest, its is the responsibility of the project manager to understand these conflicts and resolve them and manage expectations of the stakeholders. In case of any doubts the conflicts should be resolved in favor of the customer.

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