Stakeholders Archives

Take the risk of trusting your team

From the part of the person who gives it, trust is hard. It requires a leap of faith. It requires that we believe the person we trust is worth it.

From the part of the person who receives it, trust is energizing. It means that someone was willing to take that leap of faith for us. It means we are worth it. Trust also carries responsibility: if we want to keep that trust, we must prove the giver right. This means delivering on that trust.

Project management requires a high level of trust

The project manager must trust the team to do quality work on time and on budget.
The project team must trust the project manager to lead them efficiently and help them meet their deadlines.
The stakeholders must trust the project manager to understand their needs.
The project sponsors must trust the project manager to control the project and prevent cost and schedule overruns.

In a nutshell, the project team must trust each other. That includes the project manager, the team, the stakeholder and the sponsors. For most of us, […]

How to find the hidden stakeholders in your project

It’s every project manager’s worst nightmare: a stakeholder magically appears at the end of the project, and makes your life miserable.

Here are a few examples:

The project stalls at production because the IT team won’t install software that doesn’t meet their security requirements on their servers.
The great new product is not being used, because the end-users feel it is to complicated and they don’t need it anyway.
At delivery, the client refuses the product because it doesn’t meet an industry standard they forgot to inform you about.

Is any of this familiar? In any project, you’ll have the visible stakeholders and the hidden stakeholders.

Visible stakeholders are easy to manage: they are vocal and they will make their opinions known on their own. Even if they are opposed to your project, they can be monitored and, in time, convinced that your project is good.

Hidden stakeholders, however, are very dangerous. They won’t speak up. Sometimes, they are simply forgotten by the project team. As Murphy will have it, these stakeholder will appear in your project at the worst moment.

So, how […]