Managing Stakeholders On Your Project

It doesn't matter whether a project is small or big, there are always stakeholders involved in all of them. Different approaches, tactics and methodologies are involved when it comes to stakeholder management to ensure stipulated outcomes of a project. In <a href="http://www.pmchampion.com">project management</a>, managing stakeholders enables you and your team to develop good understanding regarding how outsiders involved in the project will be affected. Stakeholder management allows you to plan better ways of communication with those involved, resulting in avoiding potential issues and conflicts. Generally, the procedure includes gauging the interest of stakeholders, working to develop communication with them through employing various means and styles of communication, and then letting them know the benefits they can get from the project. There are a lot of reasons and benefits associated with effective stakeholder management, but some of the important ones are:

Better Communication Leads to Reduced Risks

Good stakeholder management reduces the number of issues and problems. The more active you are communicating with your stakeholders, the better will be your risk management strategy. You should also know that every individual, including stakeholders, involved with the project has the ability to spot potential risks that you might have missed. The more you are open and engaged with concerned individuals, the more likely you are to find issues and problems that can affect the progress and end-results of an ongoing project.

Provides Good Advice and Help

Some stakeholders are very proactive and can provide you with lots of help and good advice. As a project manager, you can get the stakeholders involved with different tasks and delegate. Stakeholders can be made a part of the team and you can benefit from their skill set and expertise in the project for absolutely nothing in return. As long as you have clarified the terms of involvement from the beginning, you can reach out to them anytime for help and advice, and can consider them as an extra part of your team.

Project Handover Becomes Easier

During the project completion and transition phase, you will see that how much trouble you have been saved from by effective stakeholder management. Involvement and sending continuous reports to the stakeholder can make creating and presenting a final report easier; they already know what you have been doing throughout the project and won't raise any objections regarding any aspect of the project.

Probability of Project Success Increases

In spite of how a project ends, if you have involved the stakeholders and have been honest with them throughout the process, they are more likely to perceive it as being successful. In most cases, projects don't cover the expected targets, but with effective stakeholder management, their expectations can be altered and you can prepare them for what they will receive at project completion. Since an engaged stakeholder stays up-to-date with progress of the project, they are much more likely to accept the outcomes, even if they are not according to the initial project plan. They already have a good idea of what the issues and problems were that caused deviation from a planned outcome.