Working With Stakeholders

This chapter explains how the project management systems approach can be used to develop a stakeholders’ analysis from the project manager's perspective and how each stakeholder brings different skills, expertise, standards, priorities and agendas to the project. Projects normally have a wide range of stakeholders with different and sometimes competing interests who can have significant influence over the eventual success or failure of the project. The project manager has the responsibility to identify the key stakeholders and interested parties and determine their needs and expectations. Stakeholders tend to be associated with the project, and the network of useful contacts tends to be associated with the project manager and might have nothing to do with the project. It means that the project manager interfaces with a new set of stakeholders with every project; however, the network of helpful contacts stays with the project manager from project to project.