McLaughlin Electronic Enterprises is experiencing a
large volume of complaints from customers about their response time on customer trouble reports. 15 different functional units are engaged in handling these trouble reports for different types of customers and different product lines.
Terry Evans, the project manager for this multi-
department project, is from Engineering and just earned her PMP®. Terry is concerned about managing the Trouble Report Improvement Project (TRIP) across all of these departmental boundaries.
The VP of Sales, Gwendolyn Stiles, is the project
sponsor and she drove the project through the approval process based on the cost of lost customers.
The company has over 5,000 employees and this
project will include systems development, construction of new office facilities, training of employees and procurement of computer hardware and other equipment.
The project will utilize resources from 15 different
departments and technical specialists from 4 support departments (Information Systems, Construction, Training and Development).
Terry didn’t mind working late and Gwendolyn Stiles, the VP of Sales/Marketing and project sponsor, requested the meeting. But it did seem odd to meet at 8:30 at night and for the sponsor to request that she bring a pepperoni pizza. Terry found the right room in the deserted conference center, knocked and went in juggling the pizza box and her iPad.
Gwendolyn Stiles looked up from the papers in front of her and said, "Welcome! I know this is a bit unusual but the way we do projects in Marketing is to keep a tight lid on things. That way the competition doesn't find out about what new products we’re offering or our other marketing initiatives. I want to do this project exactly the same way without any interfering outsiders. That's why we’ll meet later at night. I hope you don't mind….Oh and this,” she pointed to a young woman sitting at the table, “is Audrey, my assistant." Terry set the pizza and paper plates down on the table and smiled at Audrey. "It's not my choice to work evenings but I certainly can accommodate your schedule. I'm a little concerned, however, about keeping the project secret from other departments whose cooperation we need."
Gwendolyn replied with a wave of her hand, “Well it’s not secret from top management but I don’t want to have people from other departments involved in planning this thing. All they'll do is work their own agendas and slow us down. We need to move fast!"
Terry helped herself to a slice of pizza and said, "I know it sounds like it would slow things down to engage our stakeholders but it actually speeds things up. These stakeholders are the people we need to support the project across the organization and the managers and directors are the people we need to make changes in their departments’ operations. They clearly have a stake in this project and we need their active and enthusiastic support. Getting people to make changes in their work habits is always difficult and it will be even harder if we don't let the stakeholders
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Project Manager’s KnowledgeBase Initiating Identify Stakeholders 13.1
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participate in the planning and delivery of the project. In a very real sense we need to ‘sell’ the project to these stakeholders."
Audrey asked, "Exactly who are the stakeholders?"
Terry answered, "Anyone who is affected by the project or who can affect it. As I said, were going to be asking a very large number of departments to change their operations if we're going to improve trouble-ticket turnaround time. The managers and the employees in each of those departments who have to change their work procedures are all important
stakeholders because if they don't do things differently this project will fail. Other departments will have to lend us people to do the work of this project. If they don't cooperate in making people from their departments available, this project is going to fail. So stakeholders are very influential and some of them are in very powerful positions. There are other departments and even outside firms who will supply resources this project needs and they’re stakeholders as well, with perhaps a little less influence and power over our success.”
Gwendolyn smiled and said, "You're basically looking at the stakeholders as if they were customers and segmenting the market."
Teri nodded agreement and said, "Good project managers tailor the procedures they use to fit the needs of each project. On this project, I think a fairly detailed segmentation of our stakeholders is warranted. We’ll identify the stakeholders and also make an initial assessment of their interests in terms of what they want to get out of the project, their expectations for what it will do for the company and to their area of responsibility, their ability to influence the project and their requirements from the
project.”
Gwendolyn slapped the conference table and said, "That makes sense. Let's do it!"
50 minutes later, Terry had the first two stakeholders entered into the initial stakeholder register and they stopped to finish the pizza.
Between bites Terry said, "This is the way we’ll continue to identify stakeholders and you can see how we’re also laying out the start of our stakeholder management strategy. I think the key to that strategy will be identifying people who have a lot of influence and engaging them in the project. Those people whose departments will be significantly affected by the project in terms of the changes, should have significant roles in the planning of the project. Less
influential stakeholders may not be offered those decision- making roles but we certainly will communicate with them regularly so they're aware of what's going on in the project and how they can help.
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Project Manager’s KnowledgeBase Initiating Identify Stakeholders 13.1
Gwendolyn nodded and said, "I agree the people who have the most influence over the project’s success need to be engaged initially in the project. And we need to keep them informed and maybe even ‘take their temperature,’ you know, find out how they're feeling about the project on a regular basis. We don’t want to be taken by surprise by the people who have a problem or an issue. That's exactly how we deal with our important customers.”
Terry was typing into her iPad and when she finished, she looked up and said, "I'll lay out those elements of our stakeholder management strategy and we’ll reflect that strategy in both our requirements gathering and in our stakeholder and communications plans for the project."