Project Stakeholder Management Plan: Managing Expectations! - YouTube

>>Hello.

I’m Jennifer Whitt, Director of ProjectManager.com.

[Music Intro]

>>Welcome to our white board session today on how to manage stakeholder expectations.

One of the biggest complaints we have from project managers are how can we ever manage

the expectations of all these stakeholders?

It’s just too much to keep track of.

Well, we want to give a few reminders today, some cues that may tip you off that maybe

expectations are out of alignment and some things you can do for prevention.

So let’s look at some reminders.

I want to remind everyone that not everyone is a stakeholder.

So many times when a project is initiated, there are different people within the organization,

other client members, other team members, other vendor partners who try to give impact

and feedback and request changes and we need to remember they aren’t necessarily stakeholders.

Typically all organizations that are impacted by the project have stakeholders who are represented

on the project and members of the change control board.

But they have a representative that they go to that they answer to for the organization,

so not everyone is a stakeholder.

The formal stakeholders are documented, typically in your charter and/or your project plan.

So your stakeholders, they will be identified by the name, the role they’re playing on

the project and the organization they’re representing.

So those are the true stakeholders.

Anyone else from those organizations who have feedback need to be redirected to their stakeholders

for them to provide the input through them.

Number two they are, they being the stakeholders.

They’re who the project manager answers to and again they’re documented so they’re

the people that you look to for guidance.

Number three a reminder that the stakeholders typically have multiple projects going on

so they’re attending a million meetings, they have a million tasks they’re responsible

for, they’re looking at a lot of reports trying to make decisions.

So they rely on you, the project manager to keep things documented, managed and delivered.

Number four they can get things confused.

It’s just a principle.

With all those things going on, it’s easy to get things confused.

Not because they intentionally want to get things confused, but they have so much going

on that it’s hard to keep things in order and on track.

Again that’s why they need the project manager.

Number five they can make statements, they being the stakeholders; can make statements

that are inaccurate or out of date.

Again, not intentionally, but if things continue to change and go through the change control

board and decisions are made that cause changes, they can merely be making statements based

off of old information if they are not kept up-to-date.

So I wanted to give some of these reminders because many times when things start happening

during the course of a project, then people run around with different myths or misinformation.

So what are some of the cues that tip you off that expectations from your stakeholders

are not being met?

If you have stakeholder or people within the organization that are saying, “Well I thought

this project was going to be delivered last month.”

Or “I thought this person was going to deliver something.”

Or the he or she said comment, “Well she said that we were supposed to get IT to do

a certain task” or “this never works” or “IT never delivers” or “we’re always

late.”

If you hear some of these cues, then again they’re cues that somewhere there’s a

misalignment, something that you need to address as a project manager.

What is prevention for some of the expectations being out of alignment?

Well we feel like you can start things out right and keep them on track along the way

in the project.

And here it’s true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

So here are some things we found helpful.

Number one again, document the stakeholders.

So document the stakeholders formally in your charter or your project plan so you know their

name, their role in the organization they’re representing.

And actually know the stakeholders.

Many times I talk with project managers who have stakeholders and they say, “Well, we

don’t even know who they are, we’ve never seen them.”

They’ve never talked to them.

Well remember, they’re who you answer to, they are the people who own the project, they’re

the people who fund the project and they’re the people who are the decision makers for

the project.

So you as the project manager need to know them.

The best way we know how to do that is to interview them.

If you’re there locally with them then it’s great to have a coffee meeting or just an

informal meeting, just a few minutes or even if you say, “Well my team is remote, or

they’re in another country.”

Well, Skype is good for that.

You can Skype or have a phone conversation, but really get to know them.

Get to know their organization, get to know what issues they have, what assumptions they’re

making, what concerns or what they value the most in the project.

So really get to know what makes them tick and what will throw them off track.

Inform your team of this information about the stakeholders.

Get your team to know your stakeholders.

Your team members need to know, not just the tasks they’re responsible for, but they

need to know who they’re working for, who the client is, who the stakeholders are.

Things about the project that are important, that will help them keep that in mind as the

project goes along.

Then set up an enforce process.

It’s important as a project manager to keep processes in align so when other people in

the organization, maybe either a project manager or your team members and let them know that

there is a process, a change management process.

So if feedback needs to come through the project or decisions need to be made it needs to go

through the formal change management process.

Again, knowing that even though you enforce a process sometimes you have to tweak your

process, so keeping that up-to-date and keeping everyone within the project and outside the

project on track.

Then providing status frequently, regularly, up-to-date in the format that is appropriate

for the different person, remembering that executives require a different level of status

than the team members.

The team members may need more detail on their task, the executives may need more details

about the overall status of the project and the health of the project.

Then touch base regularly and ask questions of your stakeholders.

Contact them again, keep in constant contact and touch base and say, “How is it going,

what do you think about the project?”

“Is it meeting your expectations?”

So by asking questions you can see what concerns they have instead of getting in an executive

meeting and you being the last to know that you’re going to be hit with something that

your team has missed or you as the project manager have missed.

And then, important to dispel myths.

Because the stakeholders do have multiple projects, so many things going on, it’s

hard for them to keep track of, there are different people within the project, outside

the project giving information and that’s where myths come about.

Where people make assumptions, misstatements about things, so it’s important to constantly

dispel those myths along the way and keep people saying truth about what’s actually

happening in the project.

So we feel like this is the ounce of prevention that will save you a pound of cure for keeping

your stakeholder expectations aligned and on track.

If you’re looking for a tool that can help you keep your stakeholder expectations on

track and in alignment, then sign up for our software now at ProjectManager.com.

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