Chris Pimbock, the project manager, works for
Royster Corporation in the Customer Service
department managed by Tom Sterns, who directs 15 employees including Chris.
The salespeople triggered the project because
customers were complaining about service response time. Tom Sterns responded by initiating the Trouble Report Improvement Project (TRIP). The statement of work and business case define success as responding more quickly to customer trouble reports.
Tom Sterns smiled and handed Chris Pimbock the signed business case saying, “Here you are, the Sales VP and I both approved it." Tom pointed to his PC where Outlook was open, "Who do we send it to?”
Chris stuck the signed business case onto his clipboard and said, “Well, we should send it to all the stakeholders.” Tom responded, "Yes, I have all the employees in the department on the distribution list."
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Project Manager’s KnowledgeBase Initiating Identify Stakeholders 13.1
"I think we need to think of the stakeholders a bit more broadly," Chris said. "Stakeholders are the people who will be affected by the project and we identify them up front so we can get their requirements and manage their
expectations. The company's customers are certainly affected by the project and I would imagine that the Sales department, who started this whole thing, is probably the most important stakeholder."
Tom said, "I don't want those people from Sales and
Marketing telling us how to run this project. They stick their noses into our business more than enough as it is. I’m going to send it to just the employees in our department."
Chris smiled and said, "You're the boss and the project sponsor so we'll do it your way. But ignoring other important stakeholders will really reduce our odds of being successful. It creates a situation where stakeholders and their
requirements can spring up just as we’re finishing the project. Then they’ll cost much more to address and make us late in addition. Like it or not, Sales and Marketing started this project and their opinion of our work when the project is done will matter a lot. So why not involve them in the project now rather than letting them surprise us at the end with what they really wanted?"
Tom nodded slowly, "That makes good sense. And it would be just like those jerks to watch us do all this work to improve service and then tell us we didn't do what they wanted."
Chris smiled and said, "That's exactly why we identify the stakeholders early and then manage their expectations so we don't get those nasty surprises."
Tom said, "Okay I'm sold. How do we do this stakeholder identification?"
Chris thought for a moment, running through the
stakeholder identification techniques in his mind. Then he thought about the scale of the project and the fact that Tom, the sponsor, was not familiar with the best practices in project management and had seen too many projects dragged down by unnecessary paperwork and meetings. Chris decided to move slowly; a little bit of stakeholder identification was appropriate for this small project and would pay big benefits. An elaborate stakeholder
identification process would be overkill and might cause Tom to skip the whole process.
Chris said, "Well we always tailor our project management tasks to the size of the project and this is a small one. So why don't you and I do some stakeholder identification right now?”
Tom nodded agreement, "Clearly we have some
stakeholders in Sales. I can make a call and get them to assign a representative; probably one of the salespeople." Chris said, "That's a good idea but we also have other Sales stakeholders plus some in Marketing whose expectations we want to manage. And it's much better for us to manage those expectations than to hope that one salesperson assigned to the project will do the job for us. So let's go ahead and get somebody else involved but also identify the VP of Sales/Marketing and some of her directors as
stakeholders. We'll get them engaged during our requirements gathering and also make them part of the stakeholder and communications management plans." Tom smiled, "That's exactly the way to play the game. I can't think of any other stakeholders besides the people here in the department and our customers who are clearly affected. But Sales and Marketing will never let us talk to the customers directly. That's their turf."
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Project Manager’s KnowledgeBase Initiating Identify Stakeholders 13.1
Chris nodded and said, "I'll make a note to add customers as a stakeholder group anyway. Maybe something will come up. We can always add additional stakeholders as they come to our attention but I think that's enough for the moment. I'll start the stakeholder register.”