The term “stakeholder” refers to any party affected by your business with a vested interest in the outcome of a project, initiative, or decision. This project management tutorial discusses the best practices that can be adopted to manage stakeholders in a software development organization.
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What is a stakeholder?
Stakeholders are people or organizations that have a stake in a project – in our case, a software development project. You can think of your stakeholders as anyone who has a vested interest in your software project. Examples of stakeholders include employees, customers, suppliers, investors, partners, and even competitors.
Stakeholders can affect – or be affected by – the project; they may have different goals and priorities than you do. For example, clients, managers, and other employees all have an interest in getting the job done correctly and on time.
What is stakeholder management?
Stakeholders are people who play a key role in the project’s success and are interested in the progress of your project. Stakeholder management is defined as an ongoing process of identifying, engaging, and getting in touch with stakeholders to ensure the overall success of the project.
This is necessary because stakeholders are affected by the success or failure of your project. Stakeholder management helps ensure that your project is successful by providing clear communication about the goals of the project and how it will impact others.
Stakeholder management is essential to business strategy as it helps organizations identify their most important stakeholders and understand their needs and expectations. It also allows organizations to communicate effectively with these stakeholders to meet their needs while pursuing their own goals.
Managing Stakeholders: Implementing Your Stakeholder Management Plan
If you are a project manager looking to implement your stakeholder management plan, there are a few things you will need to keep in mind. Here are a few tips for implementing a stakeholder management plan:
- Keep communication lines open: This is essential for managing stakeholders effectively. You should ensure that they are aware of the latest developments and changes.
- Be clear about expectations: Your stakeholders will be more engaged if they know what is expected of them. Be clear about deadlines, deliverables, and other expectations from the start.
- Build relationships: Strong relationships with your stakeholders are essential to successful stakeholder management. Please get to know them and their interests and build rapport over time.
- Be responsive to needs and concerns: Make sure issues and concerns are dealt with in a timely and effective manner. Show that you’re responsive to their needs and take their input seriously.
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Managing Stakeholders: Decide What You Want from Each Stakeholder
There are several stakeholders in any given project, each with their own goals and agendas. It is important to take the time to understand what each stakeholder wants from the project, and how their goals align (or do not align) with the project’s goals.
Once you have a good understanding of what each stakeholder wants, you can start to make decisions about which stakeholders to engage with and how to engage with them. Not every stakeholder needs to be involved in every decision; sometimes it’s more effective to focus on a smaller group of key stakeholders.
When making decisions about which stakeholders to engage with, consider the following:
- What is this stakeholder’s role in the project?
- What is this stakeholder’s level of influence?
- What is this stakeholder’s interest in the project?
- How invested is this stakeholder in the project’s success?
Managing Stakeholders: Engage Your Stakeholders Early and Regularly
It is essential to engage stakeholders early and regularly when managing a project. The stakeholder management process should begin at the start of the project and continue throughout its duration. Engaging stakeholders early and often will help to ensure their buy-in and support for the project. It will also allow them to provide input and feedback that can improve the chances of success.
There are several ways project managers can engage your stakeholders:
- Through regular meetings
- By sending updates and reports
- Conducting surveys
- Maintaining regular communication channels
Managing Stakeholders: Communicate and Communicate Often
Stakeholder communication is a critical part of project management. The stakeholders need to know what is going on in your project to provide the necessary feedback or input to help you make decisions. It’s important to communicate often with your stakeholders during each project phase or step of the software development process.
It will help if you, as a project manager, determine how frequently and how much information to share based on your company’s culture and each stakeholder’s role in the software development organization. Some people might be interested only in status updates, and others may want daily updates — the key is finding out what works for everyone involved so that you can tailor communications accordingly.
Regular communication will help build trust and understanding between you, your developers, and your stakeholders. It will also help keep them engaged in the project and ensure they know its importance. There are a few different ways project managers can communicate with their stakeholders: emails, phone calls, regular meetings with your team, and collaboration tools. You can also hold special stakeholder meetings to discuss specific issues or get feedback on the project.
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Managing Stakeholders: Be Honest
Managing stakeholders can be difficult, but being honest with them is essential to maintaining a good relationship. Here are some tips for being honest with your stakeholders:
- Be transparent about your goals and objectives: Your stakeholders need to know what you are trying to achieve and why. When it comes to communication, be as open and honest as possible. Do not try to hide anything from your stakeholders – they will eventually find out and it will damage your relationship of trust.
- Be clear about your timeline: Your stakeholders want to know when they can get the deliverable.
- Explain any risks involved: Honesty is the best policy when it comes to managing risk.
- Share any challenges you are facing: Your stakeholders need to know if there are any potential roadblocks for you or your developers’ to achieve success.
To establish credibility and trust with your stakeholders, you must be honest and ethical in everything you do.
Managing Stakeholders: Be Flexible
When managing your stakeholders, you should be flexible and accommodating. Their needs and wants can change over time, and you need to be able to adapt your approach accordingly.
Here are some tips for being flexible with your stakeholders:
- Be open to change: You should feel free to try new things or adjust your plans depending on the feedback received from stakeholders.
- Be responsive to stakeholder requests: If a stakeholder asks for something, try to accommodate them.
- Be willing to compromise: Sometimes you will only be able to meet some of your stakeholder’s demands, but you can try to find a middle ground that satisfies both parties.
Final Thoughts on How to Manage Stakeholders
The end goal of stakeholder management is to provide value to your organization by making sure that your stakeholders feel heard and understood while also keeping them satisfied. The key here is communication: you should speak with each stakeholder in a way that makes sense for them individually.
Make sure you understand their goals, concerns, and how best to address their issues and concerns—and then do so by communicating with them in holistic ways (such as through an e-mail or meeting).
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