Managing a Project with Difficult Stakeholders

actually your graphics aren't quite correct.

At one time, after the project gets rolling, The three main factors in your scope are Cost, Quality and Schedule. Pick (2).

They have since increased the criteria to 6. But three should be sufficient.

And any changes that come from the stakeholders, has to be addressed. If they feel these changes are necessary, they have to immediately know the consequences.

And its the Project Managers job to get this communicated to avoid scope creep.

Communication is key.

And the Formula for paths/channels of communication is: N(N-1)/2

Where N = the number of stakeholders. Which points out, the larger the project team, the greater the complexity.

The key to this is to choose the decision makers at the start. If everyone knows this and agrees to it, then changes can only be implemented by the decision makers.

Early on, the decision makers need to create a policy for making changes. Decide when meeting will occur, who reports to them and the task for each person.

Do this early and problems can be resolved quickly and efficiently.

If there is one thing that I have learned in my many years as a Project Manager, it's that the up-fronts tasks are the most crucial and the ones that will lay the foundation for proactive Stakeholder Management.

Project Charter containing a well written scope, clearly identifying what is and isn't 'in-scope'. What the deliverables are, who the customers for those deliverables are, and what their requirements are for successfully meeting them.

A RACI chart is also a valuable tool and highlights who should be engaged, how, and when.

It must be acknowledged that there are two type of Stakeholders. In broad-general terms (paraphrased PMI definitions):

1. External - those that can gain or lose as a result of project success or failure; typically project sponsors/customers.
2. Internal - those who's actions or non-action can influence project outcome; typically project team members or supporting departments.

At the highest level, Stakeholder Management is a continuous 4-step process:

1. Identify - not only who they are, but also their level of involvement, interest, and influence.
2. Plan - strategy to move Stakeholders from where they are in regards to involvement/interest/influence to where you need them to be.
3. Manage - As others have stated, communication is key here - not just the act of, but the art of... who wants detail, who doesn't - who wants written reports, who wants phone calls, etc. The key here is to engage at two levels. First, at the level of the perceived need of the Stakeholder. And, second - to foster the level of engagement you need them to be at to ensure project success.
4. Control - Essentially you want to monitor engagement levels and adjust your strategy as necessary; remember you're dealing with people, not systems, and they're unpredictable sometimes. A Project Manager on-top of their Stakeholders should never be caught off-guard.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I want to touch on Stakeholder Mapping for a minute though. I'm sure you've all seen the 2-axis Power/Interest Grid. If not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_analysis

But, this model alone, although it has some merit, is limiting and discounts some key Stakeholder traits. If you're going to stick with a 2-axis model to 'analyze' your Stakeholders, you'll need three of them in order to gain an effective and comprehensive understanding:

1. Power (authority) / Interest (concern)
2. Power (authority) / Influence (active involvement)
3. Influence (active involvement) / Impact (effect change)

Personally, I prefer the Salience Model which breaks Stakeholders down by their Power, Urgency, and Legitimacy.

Most all of my 'analyzing' is done mentally, though. I don't write this stuff down, lest it gets out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the topic of communication, two things:

Remember what High School Speech Class taught you about Encode > Transmit (noise) > Decode > Acknowledge (noise) > Response (noise)

And, keep in-mind the pitfalls of the different communications types (interactive, push, pull). Just because you send a status reports, doesn't mean it was read or understood.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When you transition from Engineering to Project Management, you deploy a different skill set. Where engineering is a hard skill, Project Management is a Soft Skill: Facilitating Consensus, Resolving Conflict, Negotiating, Building Trust, Influencing, Conflict Resolution, Presentation Skills, etc.

F=MA... it always has, and likely always will - you will not have that type of predictability when dealing with people.