Mastering stakeholder dynamics

Stakeholder management is one of the keys to project success, making and maintaining good working relationships with customers, stakeholders, and team members. This blog post will focus on effective stakeholder management with real tools, strategies, and solutions that anyone can implement. It doesn’t matter if you are the lead of a team, a project manager or a team member, anyone can use these tools. I will try to focus on real practical examples.

Identify Stakeholders

The first step is identifying the stakeholders. In many projects is not always obvious who is the stakeholder. There are cases where the stakeholders are not visible by just reading the problem statement of the project. For example:

Imagine you are leading a project to develop a communication tool for a large organisation. The tool aims to streamline communication among employees, integrate with existing email systems, Slack and the customer system. The system offers features like instant messaging and file sharing etc.

The various departments of the organization that will use the tool, the team of software engineers that will develop the tool, and the management that is interested in the success of the project are the obvious stakeholders. A non-obvious stakeholder is the legal and compliance team, who ensures the tool complies with data privacy laws and internal policies.

One effective way to create an overview of all stakeholders is to use a RACI matrix. A RACI matrix relates the identification of roles relative to involvement in completing tasks or deliverables of a project. RACI is an acronym representing the Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed as they detail the four main responsibilities at hand. It provides a formal definition of roles and responsibilities in projects.

In our hypothetical scenario about the communication tool, a RACI matrix may look like:

Stakeholders

1. Project Sponsor (PS)
2. IT Department (IT)
3. Development Team (Dev)
4. Quality Assurance Team (QA)
5. HR Department (HR)
6. Legal and Compliance Team (LGL)

Tasks

1. Requirements Gathering
2. Tool Design
3. Development
4. Testing
5. Legal and Compliance Review
6. Training and Documentation
7. Deployment
8. User Feedback and Iteration

RACI Matrix

Task	PS	IT	Dev	QA	HR	LGL
Requirements Gathering	A	R	C	I	C	I
Tool Design	I	C	R	C	I	C
Development	I	I	R	C	I	I
Testing	I	I	C	R	I	I
Legal and Compliance Review	I	I	I	I	I	R
Training and Documentation	I	I	C	I	A	I
Deployment	R	A	C	I	I	I
User Feedback and Iteration	I	I	R	C	C	I

Key

• R: Responsible - The person or team who does the work.
• A: Accountable - The person or team ultimately answerable for the task’s success.
• C: Consulted - Those whose opinions are sought.
• I: Informed - Those who are kept updated on progress.

Stakeholder mapping

The next step is to understand the needs and expectations of each stakeholder. This is a process of conducting stakeholder analysis. This may include identifying key stakeholders, ranking their demands in an order of preference and establishing engagement plans for each group. A simple but useful way is a categorization based on influence and interest (High influence and high interest; high influence and low interest; low influence and high interest; low influence and low interest).

Influence and Interest Matrix

Stakeholder	Influence	Interest
Project Sponsor (PS)	High	High
IT Department (IT)	High	High
Development Team (Dev)	High	High
Quality Assurance (QA)	High	High
HR Department (HR)	Medium	Medium
Legal and Compliance (LGL)	Medium	High
Customer Service Team (CST)	Low	High

Negotiation

Different stakeholders have different needs and interests, this can create conflict that can only be resolved by reaching an agreement that is acceptable to all the parties. In that stage a negotion with the interested parties have to start. Some tips for effective negotion:

• Prepare as well as possible on the needs, wants, and potential objections of all participants.
• Understand the context and background of the negotiation process in order to anticipate problems and opportunities.
• Active listening, take a full, active interest in the sayings of the stakeholder, get their perspective and let them know that you understand them, which is the process of building trust and bringing out interests.
• Try to find solutions that meet the basic needs of all parties involved (Win-Win solutions)
• Concentrate on the collaboration of ideas rather than competition, to create a positive atmosphere during negotiations.
• Present alternative options and compromises. When a party is flexible, the possibility for innovative solutions can be found where they are not initially visible.
• Be clear and concise with your language to avoid misunderstandings and make all parties be on the same page.

Some tools that can help:

• Data-Driven approach and Visual Aids: Use data to support/compare positions. Even simple spreadsheet diagrams can help.
• Storytelling: Present arguments through compelling narratives, present and discuss flows by doing design reviews.

Manage expectations

Expectation management would include setting crystal clear objectives for the project and timelines, keeping the stakeholders well informed and be proactive in anticipating various concerns that may arise. Some tips:

• Establish and deploy a communication plan: Develop and implement strategies to ensure that the stakeholders are communicated with in the required manner.
• Conduct regular status meetings: Keep the stakeholders updated through regular status meetings regarding the progress.
• Involve stakeholders: Consistently engage the stakeholders and interact with them meaningfully to generate trust levels.
• Develop risk management plan: Identify possible risk and proposed mitigation strategies.
• Performance measurements: Apply objective criteria for measuring and reporting the performance of the project.

Advocate for solutions

It is very important to approach any difficulty with a positive and solution oriented mindset. Engineering leaders must persuasively advocate for finding solutions while considering stakeholders’ needs.