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Identifying and Managing Project Stakeholders
Project Management · Chapter 1: Foundations and Framework of Project ManagementSection 1.5 · lesson 5 of 7312 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
How to find, analyze, record and engage everyone a project touches.
- Define a stakeholder and combine techniques to identify internal and external stakeholders
- Classify stakeholders on the power and interest grid and choose an approach for each
- Build a stakeholder register and compute engagement gaps and effort scores
- Explain how to surface expectations and keep the register current
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Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,670 words). Read along, or search it.
Opening Scenario
The Friday Volunteers Nobody Listed
Marisol is replacing the software that records loans, returns and holds across a county library system. Her first list of stakeholders looks complete: the director, branch staff, the technology team, the finance office, and the supplier. Then a branch supervisor, Teodor, mentions twenty volunteers who shelve returns every Friday. They're heavy borrowers, and they once persuaded the library board to reverse a change to loan limits. Nobody had listed them. So who counts as a stakeholder, and how much attention does each one deserve?
Definition
Affect, Affected or Believe Affected
A stakeholder is anyone who may affect the project, be affected by it, or believe they're affected by it. The first clause covers people with a lever: money, approval, expertise. The second covers people whose work, home or income will change. The third matters because people act on what they believe. A neighbor who believes a new depot will bring heavy traffic behaves as if it will. A stakeholder needn't be paid by the project, work for the organization, know the project exists, or favor it. So the term is wider than the customer, and wider than the team. The practical danger is leaving someone out, not listing too many.
Categories
Internal, External, End Users and Support
Internal stakeholders are inside the organization doing the project: staff, managers, the sponsor, other departments. External ones are outside it: customers, suppliers, regulators, neighbors, the community. The line moves with your viewpoint. End users, the people who use the result every day, often differ from the customer who approved it. Here, the director approves, but branch staff and patrons will use it. Support staff keep a product running after the team moves on. The library's help desk will field the first calls after launch, yet nobody named it. A good habit: for each step of a process, ask who touches this, and who will feel it change.
Techniques
Combining Ways to Find Stakeholders
No single technique finds everyone, so project managers combine several. Document review studies contracts, complaint logs and old project files. It's cheap, but records go stale, and miss anyone never written down. Interviews are one-to-one conversations. Asking who else should I speak to lets the list grow. That's how Teodor's volunteers surfaced. Brainstorming is a fast group session, but a group shares its members' blind spots. Checklists of typical categories guard against forgotten ones. Questionnaires reach a large group, like every patron, though answers tend to be shallow. And identification never finishes. Any technique can turn up new names at any point.
Analysis
Rating Power, Interest and Attitude
Once you have names, analysis decides where the effort goes. Power is the ability to influence decisions or results, through authority, resources, expertise, or the power to block. Interest is how much someone cares about the outcome. It's independent of power: someone can care intensely and change nothing. Attitude is their stance: supportive, neutral, or resistant. These ratings are judgments, and a common error is reading power off the organization chart. Branch staff sit low on the chart, yet they can slow adoption just by keeping paper notes beside the new system. So write down the evidence behind each rating, ask a colleague to challenge it, and revisit it as you learn more.
Tool
The Power and Interest Grid
The power and interest grid sorts each stakeholder by how much power and how much interest they have. Each quadrant has a usual approach. High power and high interest: manage closely, with frequent two-way contact and a part in decisions. Branch staff land here. High power, low interest: keep satisfied. Consult enough to avoid a surprise objection, like the finance office. Low power, high interest: keep informed, with clear updates and a way to give feedback. Patrons often warn of problems early. Low power, low interest: monitor, with minimal effort, watching for change. The grid has limits. It can't show attitude, its boundary is arbitrary, and it's a snapshot. Treat it as a prompt for judgment, not a measurement. Two other models are worth recognizing: an influence and impact grid, and a salience model, which weighs power, legitimacy and urgency.
Quick Check
Where the Fire Marshal Belongs
Quick check. The county fire marshal must approve where the new self-checkout kiosks go, but otherwise cares little about the project. Which approach fits the marshal? Pause, and decide. Keep satisfied. The marshal can block the work, so power is high, but interest is low. Managing closely would flood the marshal with detail nobody wants. Keep informed is for people who care a lot, and can change little.
Record
Building the Stakeholder Register
All of this lives in the stakeholder register: the project's record of who its stakeholders are, and what it knows about each. Identification data says who they are: name, organization, role, and how to reach them. Assessment data records requirements, the conditions the result must meet, and expectations, what they believe will happen. Plus their influence. Classification holds the judgments: internal or external, power, interest, attitude, quadrant, and engagement levels. Take Marisol's entry for branch staff. Contact route: the team leaders' weekly huddle, so a replacement manager can still reach them. Expectation: that training will be too short, as it was last time. It's kept apart from requirements, because it's a belief, not a condition. And every score carries a date and an evidence note, because it's a judgment that will be revisited.
Engagement
Five Engagement Levels and the Gap
Engagement levels describe how involved a stakeholder is, from one to five. Unaware: doesn't know about the project. Resistant: aware and opposed. Neutral: aware, but neither for nor against. Supportive: in favor, and willing to help when asked. Leading: actively taking responsibility for success. The register records each stakeholder's current level, and the level the project needs. The desired level isn't always leading: the finance office only needs to stay neutral. The engagement gap is the desired level number minus the current one. As a simple ranking device, not a standard method, multiply the gap by the power score to get an effort score. The scores here are illustrative.
Worked Example
Ranking Effort by Gap Times Power
The county accessibility office must approve the new public screens, but it hasn't heard of the project. Neutral minus unaware is two; times power nine, that's eighteen. Branch staff: supportive minus resistant is two; times power six, that's twelve. Ines, the director and sponsor: leading minus supportive is one; times power nine, nine. The finance office: a gap of zero, so zero. Notice what the ranking does. It puts an office that's merely unaware above staff who are actively resisting. Multiplying treats power and gap as interchangeable. A manager could fairly reverse the order, because resistance from daily users hurts adoption sooner. The actions follow the gaps: a briefing to create awareness at the office, staff testing the screens, and visible acts from the sponsor.
Quick Check
Effort Score for the Technology Team
Quick check. The library's technology team is neutral today. The project needs it leading, and its power score is five. What is its effort score: five, ten, or fifteen? Pause, and decide. Ten. Leading is five and neutral is three, so the gap is two. Two times a power of five is ten. Fifteen comes from using the current level instead of the gap, and five from forgetting the gap altogether.
Expectations
Surfacing Unspoken Expectations
An expectation is what a stakeholder believes the project will deliver, and how, when, and at what cost to them. It may never have been said aloud. Managing expectations starts with listening: ask open questions, restate what you heard, and write it down. Then negotiate a version both sides can accept, in writing. Some wants conflict. Finance wants minimal spending, while branch staff want a long, costly training period. The project manager shouldn't settle that alone, or hide it. Set out the options and consequences, and take it to the sponsor to decide. Unspoken expectations are the dangerous ones. Patrons assume they can still renew books by phone. Nobody says so, and the first plan quietly drops it. Two questions bring such beliefs out early: what would make you call this project a success, and what would you be unhappy to see?
Upkeep
Keeping the Register Current and Confidential
A register goes stale almost at once. Stakeholders appear, like a new supplier, or the help desk as launch nears. They leave, like a sponsor who changes jobs. And they change position: finance's interest jumps the moment an overrun looks possible. So review at every phase boundary, and whenever a surprise arrives. The register also holds candid judgments about named people, such as that someone is resistant, or holds little power. Treat it as confidential. Limit access, and word entries as if the subject might read them: said training was too short last time, not difficult. How open to be is contested. Some keep assessments private. Others share at least the engagement approach, to build trust. And privacy law may apply, so ask counsel.
Case Resolution
Volunteers Join the Test Team
Back to Marisol and the Friday volunteers. She had rated them low power: unpaid, with no budget. More interviews showed their power was informal: access to board members, a voice in the local press, and heavy use of standing holds on new books. The new software handles holds differently. So she moved them from keep informed to manage closely, and recorded them as resistant, though nobody had told them anything yet. Her constraints were firm. The supplier's installation window was fixed by contract, and the training budget was already spent. So she invited two volunteers onto the test team, and asked Ines to approve a three-week delay to the holds module only. Core lending launched on time. Branch staff ran two methods for holds for three weeks. In testing, the volunteers found two problems. One was fixed, and they accepted the other, because they heard about it before launch. That answers the opening question. A stakeholder is anyone who can affect the project, or feels its effects, and attention follows power, interest and the engagement gap.
Key Takeaways
Identify, Analyze, Register and Engage
To recap. A stakeholder is anyone who affects the project, is affected by it, or believes they are. Combine identification techniques, because the real danger is leaving someone out. Sort stakeholders on the power and interest grid, and record them in a confidential register. Direct your effort by the gap between current and desired engagement. And ask early about unspoken expectations, before they surface at launch.
About Project Management at UPI Study
Project Management (Business 230) is a self-paced online course of 73 video lessons in 12 chapters, from starting and defining a project to planning, budgets, scheduling tools, proposals, contracts, execution, monitoring, closure, teams and certification. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.
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