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Reviewing the Stakeholder Analysis with Your Sponsor

IT IS COMMON practice for project managers to complete a stakeholder analysis as part of the planning for a project. However, in this chapter, I am suggesting that you review the analysis with only those executives who are stakeholders, not everyone involved. There are a variety of ways to complete a stakeholder analysis, but executives will have a different way of viewing executive stakeholders than a project manager would. Here are some ideas that should help you have a conversation and work with your sponsor to plan the engagement with other key executive stakeholders.

As suggested in the previous chapter, my experience is that you should draft your own answers to these questions and then work with your sponsor to revise them into a more complete and appropriate document.

Who Are the Key Stakeholders Who Care about the Project, and Who Will Be Affected by the Deliverables?

All project managers know that the classic definition of a stakeholder is a person or group who may be affected by the outcomes of the project. As stated earlier, it is a good bet that your sponsor was chosen because his division has the most to gain from the successful outcome of the project—and therefore may have a lot to lose! For your sponsor, the stakeholders he will be most concerned with are those whose divisions or departments are impacted by the deliverables your project is producing. If you doubt that, please refer back to Chapter 1 on the facts of life for executives.

Classifying Stakeholders

The latest thinking about stakeholders is to analyze the power they can have over the project and/or decisions affecting the project. The classification of that power generally breaks down into four groups:

1.The authority they have in the organization and how that authority can allow them to impose their ideas on the project

2.The influence (particularly technical expertise) they have in the planning or execution of the project or even veto power regarding certain decisions

3.Involvement in the project, which could include people seconded to the project or participation in the Steering Committee (I’ll talk about this later) as examples

4.The level of concern or interest in the outcomes of the project

The output of your identification and classification will become input into your communication and engagement plan.

On large projects, you can also identify different stakeholder types such as:

Champion: Powerful with a high level of interest and a positive attitude. Pay attention to the champion at all times.

Friend: Low power but high interest in the project with a positive attitude. Use friends as a sounding board.

Sleeping giant: Powerful, who support the project but display low levels of interest or enthusiasm. You need to raise the giant’s level of interest.

Acquaintance: Low power and low interest, who just need to be informed from time to time

Time bomb: Powerful with a high level of interest but a negative attitude. Must be actively engaged and diffused to prevent a major disruption of the project.

Conduct an Impact Analysis

Before working with the sponsor, I like to get my team leads, business analysts, and other appropriate subject matter experts (SMEs) and do a preliminary impact analysis.

The impact analysis starts with various processes and/or workflows that will be directly impacted by the changes brought on by the project. I will return to this analysis later in the project as we begin to execute the work because things may change or our assessment of the impact may change.

After looking at the workflow or process, I would recommend you conduct a preliminary estimate on the magnitude of the change. In some of my projects, the impact has been minimal, and others have been quite dramatic. For example, in some of my systems projects, for some user stakeholders, the change might be simply in the location of navigation buttons they use to move around within the application. For other user stakeholders, the changes go way beyond simple navigation. The changes may include the way they use the system—an entirely new way of accessing and handling the information that they use to complete their work.

This type of assessment will be important to have available as you discuss various stakeholders with your sponsor. All of these people eventually report up to one of the sponsor’s peers. This should help your conversation about some of the answers to the stakeholder analysis. In my experience, this evaluation can be a real benefit. At times, I and my team did not realize there were some additional ramifications related to these stakeholders that were not visible to us but were to the sponsor. I have received excellent input from my sponsor on how to deal with certain people. I have also been able to identify risks that would not have been on my risk register if I had not had the conversation.

Within that context, identify the individuals who will care about the work you are doing. Remember to think at the higher level of a division or department that each executive oversees and how that group is impacted. These people may be vice presidents or directors as well as managers. With your sponsor, you want to work to answer these two specific questions:

1.What is this executive’s responsibility, and how will her span of control be impacted by your project?

2.Should this executive have some responsibility to the project itself?

What Is This Executive’s Responsibility, and How Will Her Span of Control Be Impacted by Your Project?

If we return to the earlier discussion about politics and leadership, there is only a small chance that another executive will have as much interest as your executive sponsor. However, executives are quite sensitive to complaints that come to their attention as the project progresses. I always talk to my sponsor about what various stakeholders know about the project. I would put my project and my reputation at risk if I assume various stakeholders know more about the project than they really do.

One of the key questions to have answered from your sponsor relates to the governance of the project. For example, will this stakeholder be part of the Steering Committee or governance board of the project? If they are part of the governance structure, then it is important for you to understand why they are on the Steering Committee so that you can determine what their role will be. If they are not part of the governance structure, and you think it would seem natural for them to be on a Steering Committee, it is very important to find out why they were not offered a seat at the table. In my experience when that has happened, what I learned was that they are sponsoring another project and just don’t have the time to give to your project. That is a reasonable business decision, but I still want to discuss with my sponsor our approach to keeping such executives informed about my project. My biggest fear would be that the only information they have about my project is through the rumor mill. Another big risk is that their perception of the project is only through complaints brought to them by their people.

It is important to understand that executives will almost always support the people who report to them. I heard one project manager express it this way: “They will never blame their people. That is like telling someone that their baby is ugly.” You just cannot win in that scenario.

What Is This Stakeholder’s Level of Support or Interest?

I also ask my sponsor to judge the level of support and/or interest of each stakeholder. This is another key element where the impact analysis can be of assistance.

In a project we did that involved implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system, I had the type of situation I am warning you about.

To simplify for the sake of illustration, the CRM is a very robust database that tracks all of the information on a customer. It tracks from the front end of the value chain, from sales to order fulfillment, and on to invoicing. Some examples of customer data are:

Key personnel and locations.

Contracts in place with divisions and locations.

Past buying patterns and potential discounts.

Credit limits.

Orders in process of fulfillment.

Outstanding invoices.

I think it is apparent that just about every department in the company would be impacted by the CRM. However, each of them had a very different perspective on what was important. For example, the:

The vice president of sales was interested in how she could assist her team in driving more sales.

The general manager of operations was most concerned about the accuracy of the orders as a way to drive his production schedule for improved efficiency and cost reduction.

The chief financial officer was concerned that the correct customer contracts and credit terms were included so that the company could be paid in a timely fashion to improve profit margins.

The vice president of customer service was most concerned that the CRM would improve customer satisfaction in annual surveys.

My sponsor in this project was the president of the company. I certainly had an advantage in that all of these people reported to my sponsor, but it also meant additional pressure for me to prevent complaints from reaching my sponsor before I could alert him. He helped me understand how to gauge each of these people as stakeholders. I asked for help in answering three questions:

1.What might they dislike about the project and why?

2.What is the best way to receive feedback from this stakeholder?

3.How can we best manage their expectations?

Here are a couple of examples. My sponsor answered the first question for the vice president of sales this way. She was very concerned that the CRM would become a bureaucratic nightmare for her team. From her perspective, she wanted the sales team out in front of customers or prospects. She was very concerned they would spend too much time in front of their laptops.

In answering question 2 for the general manager of operations, my sponsor warned me that he usually ignored e-mails, and so sending updates using that medium would be a waste of time. The suggestion was to arrange for a regular one-on-one meeting both to provide information but also to receive feedback on the project.

For question 3, the CFO was a data person, which was no surprise to me and probably is not to you either. The best way to manage his expectations was to quantify various information related to the project.

For all of the key stakeholders and my sponsor as well, the most successful way was to use pictures in graphs or charts.

In reviewing stakeholder analysis with your sponsor, be sure to:

Conduct an impact analysis prior to the review.

Determine what each executive’s responsibilities may be in relation to the project.

Identify each stakeholder’s level of commitment and support for your project.

Points to Remember

Classify stakeholders in collaboration with your sponsor.

Conduct an impact analysis to determine how each stakeholder group is affected.

Develop a role for the sponsor to play a part in the stakeholder engagement plan.

Be sure you understand each stakeholder’s level of commitment to your project.