Stakeholder management
A stakeholder is a party, an individual or a group of people who influence or can be affected or affect the actions of an organization examples are customers, suppliers, employes and owners or a given organization. Stakeholder management is a way of emphasizing that people support each other and taking an opportunity where others are not able to succeed.
Stakeholder management is very important when it comes to success of any project in any given organization, this includes giving the right people the right responsibilities in the project, as one involves more people in the development of a project as the more people will affect the project development, and those people will come to rule out how the project will shape up and finally they will be the more powerful people in that organization so great care should be taken when selecting stakeholders in the management of a project in the organization, as they will be sole determinants of the success of an organization .
The success or failure or a project is greatly influenced by the way the management in the organization pursues and expects of their stakeholders, and how much they want to involve them in the development of the project.
Research is necessary while deciding who the stakeholders should be while planning out a project; the management should have people carry out exclusive research to get the best possible stakeholders who will directly be affected by that specific project.
Before making a decision on which the stakeholders should be you should try to allocate enough time on stakeholder management to decide on the critical decisions depending on how hard the project goals are, communication time and how much help you will need from the stakeholders to achieve your goals.
It’s always important that while planning a project that the relevant people who are directly related to that project must be involved, this is because they are the ones who will make strategic decisions which will directly affect the success of the project.
Each and every stakeholder should be involved to the extent of the success of that given project. The management at the same time should not over involve stakeholders in their new project because they may end up interfering with the outcome of the project, only a limited number of stakeholders should be involved in the project.
One needs to have a full understanding of the key stakeholders and how they are likely to be affected by the project. Priority should be given to those that are affected more by the project and least priority to those that will be less affected. They need to communicate with the basic stakeholders so that they can always the part of the project and contribute to the success of the project in the best possible way.
In conclusion, it’s important to note that the success of any project will depend on the involvement of all the stakeholders if positive results are to be realized.
Maximum positive results can be achieved when all the stakeholders management communicates effectively to its important stakeholders incase the are to make any changes of while in progress with the project, the management should not keep changing its stakeholders from time to time because this will lead to inconsistent results due to different ideas contributed from the various stakeholders that will be involved.
Reference: Earned Value Project Management, Third Edition by Quentin W. Fleming and Joel M. Koppelman
