You need to identify who your stakeholders are before you can consider the impact that they might have on the project. Stakeholders will include:
࿖ The sponsor or client – the person or people who have commissioned or authorized the project and who will provide resources. This person will also usually be the one who confirms that the project has been successfully completed.
࿖ The project team – these are the people who will carry out all of the tasks and activities to complete the project. These people will need to have the knowledge, skills and experience to achieve the goals of the project. They also need to be available to work on the project at the right time.
࿖ Other managers in the organization – particularly line managers of peo- ple who have been seconded to the project team and functional managers who control resources that will be needed. You will often have to negotiate with these people to ensure that your project team and other resources are available at the right time.
࿖ Individuals and groups who will be affected by the project. These include people who are interested in the process of the project (for example, peo- ple whose lives may be disrupted as project tasks are carried out) and people who may gain advantages or be disadvantaged by the outcomes of the project. Customers and clients might be considered as a stakeholder group.
࿖ Individuals and groups who hold direct influence over the project. It is important to identify anyone or any group who holds the power to dam- age or stop the project. These are powerful stakeholders whose particular concerns may lead them to use their power to help or hinder the project.
Ask the question, ‘Who could stop this project?’ For example, who could withhold funding or prevent access to labour or resources?
Defining the project 49
࿖ People who act as representatives of the general public or of groups with interests in the project. This may include elected representatives in local government, trustees in a charitable trust or non-executive directors, and local residents groups (especially if the project involves additional noise or traffic or changes to locations of services). In projects that will interest the general public there will be media interest, and you may need to pro- vide information to local newspapers, radio and television.
࿖ Other organizations. If your project involves changes to products or ser- vices other organizations may also be stakeholders. For example, there may be other organizations that provide products or services linking or complementary to those of your organization. There may also be organi- zations that provide similar services and compete for resources or service users, or that collaborate with your organization to provide opportunities for choice in your locality.
࿖ Professional bodies, institutes, trade unions or any other formal orga- nization that may have interests because of the nature of the project. If the project involves developments that link in any way with agreed procedures or policies these bodies may want to be consulted.
Each of these stakeholders or groups will have different expectations of the project and will offer support or opposition according to how they perceive the project. There may be conflict in these different views, and not all stake- holders will be open in expressing their views, especially if they are not asked to comment. The first you might hear of a problem could be when someone complains in a very public forum. You do not, however, need to wait anx- iously for this to happen – you can manage the project in a way that anticipates a difference in views and provides opportunities for these to be expressed at an early stage, and ideally before the project brief is completed.
Many formal project management methodologies have formalized proce- dures for dealing with sponsor and stakeholder issues through a project board structure and regular meetings. PRINCE (PRojects IN Controlled Envi- ronments) is a structured method for effective project management. It is used extensively by UK government organizations and is widely recognized and used in the private sector, both in the United Kingdom and internationally.
The key features of PRINCE are:
࿖ its focus on business justification;
࿖ the defined organization structure it sets out for the project management team;
࿖ its product-based planning approach which emphasizes outcomes;
50 Managing projects in human resources
࿖ its emphasis on dividing the project into manageable and controllable stages;
࿖ its flexibility to be applied at a level appropriate to the project.
Whether you use a formal methodology or not, it is useful to identify the stakeholders of the project and to review the extent of influence that they might have on the project. It is often helpful to work with other people to identify the stakeholders to ensure that a wide range of different viewpoints are included in your final list (see Examples 4.1 and 4.2).
Example 4.2
Stakeholders in a new record-keeping system
A project designed to develop and implement a new record-keeping system in an employment agency involves people who provide and record data, people who store and retrieve the data and people who use the data. The stakeholders for the project will include:
࿖ receptionists, employment consultants, clerks and others who col- lect and record the data;
࿖ employers and people seeking work who provide the data;
࿖ those who file and retrieve the data when it is required;
࿖ those who ensure that records are kept confidential;
࿖ those who use the records to make financial decisions;
࿖ those who use the records to review service provision levels;
࿖ those who use the records to plan for use of equipment and mate- rials;
࿖ those who ensure that the system works (whether electronic or pa- per based);
࿖ anyone who will have to transfer records from the old system to the new one (this might be a very significant role where there are large numbers of records to transfer);
࿖ managers who have to reschedule staff responsibilities to enable the project to take place;
࿖ any new staff who are recruited to the project team;
࿖ other organizations and staff in those organizations who regularly require data from your organization or who provide data to your organization.
Defining the project 51
There may be people who like the existing system, who do not want any change and so will oppose or be difficult because they see the project as causing unnecessary work. There may be individuals and groups who see the opportunity to collect data in a way that is more convenient for service users or in more appropriate ways for people with particular concerns or needs. Record-keeping systems are used in so many different ways by so many different interests that a project that involves any change to the system may upset a surprising number of people.
Each setting and project proposal will have different stakeholders and dif- ferent concerns. You may find it useful to make a ‘stakeholder map’ to set out the stakeholders for your project, showing where there are links and common concerns between them.