The Foundation of Great Project Management

It’s really wonderful to see those shiny new spreadsheets will colorful columns, filled with really important data. Or the PowerPoint decks that have awesome pie charts and graphs and succinct bullet points. But what is at the very core of all these tools that we use? Communication. The majority of great project management comes from excellent communication across the board to all interested stakeholders.

Let the project team know what is going on.

Does this mean you tell everyone on the project everything that is going on? No sir. Not unless you want political chaos on your hands. You must do stakeholder analysis to determine who requires what informatio when and how it will be delivered.

Stakeholder analysis is simple when done in three simple steps:

• Identify stakeholders
• Analyze their impact on the project
• Manage stakeholders

Identify stakeholders

The PMBOK Guide, Third Edition defines a stakeholder as:

Person or organization (e.g., customer, sponsor, performing organization, or the public) that is actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by execution or completion of the project. A stakeholder may also exert influence over the project and its deliverables.

PMBOK Guide Glossary

A stakeholder can be anyone. If you are creating a new software app, the end user is a stakeholder. Their communication needs are going to differ greatly from the sponsor. Likewise, a project engineer has different communication needs than the sponsor.

During the identification phase, list out every possible person or entity that can be considered a stakeholder. As you analyze each person on your list, identify who are the potential postive and negative stakeholders. Is there anyone on your list that could negatively impact the project. These folks will require different handling. Positive stakeholders will help you mitigate the issues that may arise from the negative stakeholders.

Analyze stakeholders

Positive stakeholders can generally be separated into three groups:

• Sponsor
• Facilitators
• Technical Leads

The Sponsor initiates the project and has the most invested in the success of the project. This person(s) will often help champion the project and help neutralize negative stakeholders.

Facilitators believe in the project and may help to push it along. They do not have as much invested as the Sponsor but will help in the background as advisors.

Technical Leads are very enthusiastic about the project but do not have any power to move it forward. These folks can still be very helpful in identifying other project sponsors or facilitators.

A handy 2×2 matrix can help you place your stakeholders in the right perspective. POWER refers to the amount of impact a stakeholder can have on the outcome of a project. INTEREST refers to how much the stakeholder will be affected by the outcome of a project.

2x2 Stakeholder Analysis Matrix

Let’s take our software development project as an example. The end users are stakeholders that have a high interest in the project but low power. They would fall in the lower right quadrant “Keep informed”. Their communication would come in the form of launch announcements or usability study requests, etc. The Vice President of Product Development would fall in the high power-high interest quadrant of manage closely. Their communication would be weekly status reports, notification of issues, etc.

Manage stakeholders

Stakeholder management requires those warm and fuzzy skills that are hard to articulate on a resume. How do you assuage two groups of feuding engineers? Or worse yet, a sponsor that is ready to derail a project? This is the line that separates the good PMs from the AWESOME ones.

From my personal experience, you have to be proactive. You have to be able to see into the future and anticipate issues that will arise. (We’ll do another article on Risk Management at a later date) Most importantly, during the life of your project, it’s important that you establish a relationship with your stakeholders that will help you get things done. Because at the end of the day, the project must ship – on time and below or at cost.

Communications Plan

Creation of a communications plan at the start of the project will help guide you once the project is underway. It may need to be modified as projects often change sponsors and directions. Email, phone, status meetings, reports, etc. are all excellent tools to use. But don’t forget the human element. At the base of it all, we are all human beings and we need to establish relationships with all our project partners. Communication is the very foundation of great project management. Learn to use it wisely and you too will be great.