My-Project-Management-Expert.com provides you with the information you must know on project management stakeholders and working with stakeholders to ensure both project delivery and career success.
Project stakeholders are a key element of any delivery. They determine direction, refine the scope and basically ensure it gets delivered. In theory that sounds wonderful. In practice it translates into something else altogether. You see the reality is that these key individuals can either make or break a delivery unless the PM has developed the necessary soft skills to successfully work with them.
Having delivered countless projects over the years I know this only too well from first hand experience. You need to understand the different types of stakeholder on your team as well as what their aims and motivation are. Not everyone after all is keen on seeing the same end result delivered, despite the fact they all have a stake and hence a vested interest in it. Office politics has a huge part to play, and this only adds to the problems faced by a PM.
It means that the tough decisions take forever to be made, which when time is in short supply is not a good thing. It means that decisions which are made, are often reversed later on which leads to the dreaded scope creep. It also leads to increases in budget which you as the PM have to explain away.
However it doesn't have to be like that. I have worked with project stakeholders who have been a delight and have gone out of their way to ensure the delivery remains on track. There have been others who have made a key contribution in ensuring the scope remains both manageable but also deliverable.
The key thing is that much like a teacher, you need to keep your team in line. Have one who misbehaves, or worst still tries to de-rail the project, and you will soon find you have a fight on your hands. However by nipping the dissent in the bud you can keep focussing these key individuals on the job at hand, and ensure they leave their political battles outside.
Of course this is easier said than done. These key individuals are often senior people within the Organisation you work at. They have both influence and power. Rub them up the wrong way and not only will the end result not get delivered, but you could soon find yourself out the door. This is where the soft skills come in. These are rarely taught because they are harder to quantify than simply filling in paperwork. But if you don't know how to deal with your stakeholders then your career in the profession will be short lived and you will never end up managing the big, high profile deliveries.
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