Today, many organizations, big or small, strive to create value through projects. There is considerable literature and many courses aimed at equipping project managers with theories and methods designed to increase the likelihood of project success. Project managers are offered many tools for dealing with the classical issues in the so-called ‘project triangle’ – accomplishing the project on time, within budget, and to specification and many project managers are well-educated and skilled in using these tools. They also increasingly face and try to meet additional success criteria to executing the project as planned – like ensuring that the project contributes to the strategic aims of the organization that established it.

Sadly, despite all this, we repeatedly read about projects that apparently ‘went wrong’; some failed to generate the stipulated benefits, others were never finished and petered out along the way, while still others were afterwards not seen as successful even though they were carried out as planned. A recurring theme in these failures is project managers who have not taken sufficiently into account the interests and motivations of the persons and entities that can affect or be affected by the project, the so-called project stakeholders. The consequences of this lack of attention are varied and significant: a software development project may not result in the stipulated benefits because the intended users of the product developed cannot or will not use it in the intended way; top management suddenly cuts the budget for a project because they have lost interest in it; the project course may be hindered by persons or entities that are against the project or its outcomes because of concerns about potential negative side effects. Such opponents could be competing project teams within the organization, non-government organizations (NGOs), political groups or unanticipated government regulators. Finally, the stipulated project benefits may have been ‘oversold’, and the project declared a fiasco in spite of delivering the project deliverables agreed upon.

The solution to this type of problems lies in finding better ways to deal with individuals or entities related to the project; to improve project stakeholder management. And that is the aim of this book. Many books and articles on stakeholder management treat stakeholders as ‘black-boxes’ at a rather aggregate level, while at the same time it is acknowledged that a disaggregation of the stakeholders often is necessary in order to really understand and effectively deal with the stakeholders (Ackermann and Eden 2011). For example, an institution such as a government may be a stakeholder in a specific project, but the government is represented by one or more departments and those departments by one or more persons. In other words, stakeholders are always represented by individuals and they act and react according to their beliefs, interests and motivations. Therefore, to manage stakeholders effectively, you need to understand what drives the behaviour of your stakeholders and how you can influence this behaviour. A major part of this book is grounded in behavioural theories to provide you with concepts and tools for this understanding. We hope that these concepts and tools will help you facilitate discussions on project stakeholders’ motivations with your immediate colleagues and with the stakeholders themselves.

Behavioural insights are not sufficient for good project stakeholder management. To take advantage of these insights, we believe that an analytical and structured approach for interacting with project stakeholders is of great value. By an analytical and structured approach we mean that you apply methods and tools for analysis; that you document and store your knowledge so that it is retrievable at a later stage; that you plan many of your stakeholder interactions ahead; and that you make your plans explicit, at least to yourself. Structured knowledge about the stakeholders will make you better equipped to deal with them in ways that are beneficial for both the project and the stakeholders; search for win–win situations and co-creation of value with your stakeholders. For example you can better respond to changes during the project if you know your stakeholders’ priorities and concerns, and you can also better draw from the stakeholders’ knowledge and experience if you know your stakeholder well. Further, the structured knowledge about the stakeholders will make you better equipped to deal with the challenges that they pose, either by adapting to their requirements and wishes or by planning ahead, trying to influence the stakeholders to change their expectations, requirements, wishes or concerns. In the case of unexpected situations that call for intuition and flexibility, you can better act in a proper and effective way if you have ‘done your homework’ and considered which strategies to apply when interacting with each stakeholder. A well-conceived plan can prevent you from being carried away by the ‘heat of the moment’ or the stakeholder who shouts the loudest. It can help you to act wisely because it will enable you to empathize with your stakeholders and see the project from their points of view. To make this plan, you need to agree on the objectives of your stakeholder strategy and ways to achieve them. We offer tactics and tools for doing just that. These are founded on the theory of marketing communications as well as strategic management.

To benefit from applying an analytical and structured approach, you need to involve other members of the project organization in your stakeholder management. You cannot manage project stakeholders properly if you lock yourself up in your office. Effective project stakeholder management requires continual interactions between the members of the project organization, for example between you and the project owner and you and the project team members. Such interactions allow you to explore and exploit insights and ideas held by each of the involved – and to develop common understandings with them about the stakeholders as well as agreements on how to make use of these understandings. This book helps you facilitate the process by giving you knowledge of ways to gather and structure information on stakeholders and to plan stakeholder communication and other forms of stakeholder interaction.

You may feel uncomfortable about the thought of carefully planned management of project stakeholders if you feel that this is manipulative or exploitative. Indeed, this can raise ethical issues, particularly when you face conflicting interests. Therefore we have included a chapter on this topic.

The term ‘management’ may suggest that, as the project manager, you set the scene and play a leading part; governing the stakeholders through some formal leadership authority. At most this will only be the case for certain stakeholders, for example the project team members, and rarely true of the large majority. In addition, a project manager will often only be able to offer certain types of incentives, like information sharing; a degree of autonomy; interesting challenges; and influence on the project process; and not financial incentives or future career oriented incentives. All of this implies that you need to think broadly about ways to manage stakeholders – and understand project stakeholder management as all purposeful stakeholder-related activities to support the success of your project.

As previously mentioned, the project manager typically performs stakeholder management in conjunction with others; for example the project team members. For ease of reading, we use the term ‘you’ or ‘project manager’ to cover all persons who have a responsibility for accomplishing the project. When we refer to project stakeholders, we mean individuals or entities represented by individuals who can affect or who can be affected by the project process or the project outcomes, building on Freeman (1984) and Andersen (2008).

The motto we have adopted for project stakeholder management is ‘Easy to Understand, Difficult to Master’. In other words, you need to practice… a lot. We wish you the best of luck and hope that you will find the theories and tools presented in this book useful.