A Stakeholder is not an Overzealous Carnivore

Wait, does that say stakeholder and not steakholder? I must be getting hungry. Here we are on week four of our project management class, and I am starting to really identify the key components of successful project management. One key component that comes up quite a bit is the notion of a stakeholder. There is a good chance you are a stakeholder in a multitude of projects and did not even know it. What made you this way, and how do you identify key stakeholders in your projects?

Identifying Stakeholders

Our professor tricked us today. She asked us to identify the stakeholders of our class. We searched deep in our brains and came up with the teacher as an obvious stakeholder, and perhaps the Dean of the college. However, what was finally revealed to us is that we are ALL stakeholders. So, when the question is asked: who are the project stakeholders? The short answer is: everyone!

Fortunately, we can get a bit more specific. For example, a stakeholder can be a project sponsor, the project team, the support staff, the customers that receive and use the product or service created from the project, suppliers, and even the competitors and opponents of a project. By identifying these stakeholders, we will be able to manage our relationships with them easier.

Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder Management is a skill in itself, and fortunately there are many steps that can be taken to help with this. For example, we learned about a Stakeholder Register that we will be creating for our final semester project. A Stakeholder Register is a document that includes details related to each identified project stakeholder. Furthermore, there is also a Stakeholder Analysis, which is a technique for analyzing information to determine which stakeholders' interests to focus on and how to increase stakeholder support throughout the project. This is an important analysis to perform and maintain, as mismanagement opposition to a project can contribute to a project's failure.

With that said, identify your stakeholders! Think about who will be involved in or affected by your project activities. Keeping an eye on them, as they can make your life as a project manager either significantly easier, or devastatingly more difficult.