Illustrate Stakeholder Management and Communication throughout the entire project duration!
How can stakeholders be defined?
Stakeholders are persons or organizations that can affect, be affected by, or perceive themselves to be affected by the project
Synonym: affected party
What are exemplary stakeholders?
- Team - Team Members
-Organization the project is part of
- Project Sponsor§ Client / customer
- Client organization
- User, user groups
- Steering Board Members
- Public, interest groups
- Legislation, regulatory bodies etc.
What does the organization a project is part of / the organization it works for define / provide for a project?
- Overall vision, strategy, norms, expectations
- Policies, methods, procedures
- (Typical) management style(s)
- Work ethic, work and communication culture
- Assignment of responsibilities
- Degree project managers’ authority by defining the project manager role (authority, responsibilities etc.)
- Official communication and approval lines
What does the organization a project is part of / the organization it works for lead to?
- Forms of communication, medium, form of address, style
- Persons / groups to be included, approval paths
- Accessibility of the communication partners
What can be said about the project team as stakeholders?
The project team and its members are the most important stakeholders for the achievement of the project goals
Directly involved in the creation of the project output
See also:
- Human Resources Management (separate course unit)
- Scheduling – Capacity Management (separate course unit)
What power / ability do stakeholders have concerning the success of a project?
Power / Ability to provide necessary resources
- Budget
- People
- Information
- Know-How / Skills
What are stakeholders interested in?
Interest in
- Project success: „Some projects just have to happen.“
- Failure of the project
What are the two steps of stakeholder management?
Step 1: Identify Stakeholders à Create a stakeholder register
Step 2: Analyze Stakeholders à Develop a stakeholder management and a communication strategy
What does the first step of stakeholder management contain?
• Name of individual or group
• Contact person or members list in case of a group
• Role and position (see e.g. organizational chart)
• Contact and availability information
What does the second step of stakeholder management contain?
• Determine interest / disinterest
• Determine influence
• Determine relationship and influence among stakeholders
• The communication strategy is the base for Communication Planning: the development of the project’s communication plan
How can stakeholders be identified?
Documents and information of the project initiation phase provide important information for stakeholder identification
Project Charter / Project Brief / Project Mandate
Procurement Documents
How can stakeholders be identified through the project charter / project brief / project mandate?
• Customer
• Project Board
• Organizational chart or member lists of committees
• Project’s account manager: usually able to provide more information on stakeholders
How can stakeholders be identified through procurements documents?
• Customers: Responsibilities, escalation and approval channels
• Service Provider: Responsibilities, escalation and approval channels
• Reporting formats and requirements
What stakeholders can be identified based on the generic orgnizational chart?
• Steering board (as a role)
• Steering board members (individually)
• Project Manager
• Each workstream lead
• Workstream teams
• Project team
• (Depending on the workstream / team size) individual project team members
• (not part of the org chart) customer
• users
• suppliers
Illustrate the interest-influence matrix (stakeholder matrix) to analyze and visualize the stakeholders‘ influence and interest
When can a double stakeholder matrix be useful?
For projects dealing with cultural change and similar situations it can be useful to visualize positive and negative interest explicitly
Illustrate the double stakeholder matrix!
What is the communication plan?
The Communication Plan is the core tool regarding project communication
What are characteristics of the communication plan?
- Developed based on the stakeholder analysis
- Primarily used by the project management team
- Ensures information requirements of all stakeholders are met while spending minimum effort (on communication)
- Internal (project management) document for the project team
- Maintained by the project management team
- Communication planning can also lead to a schedule update
What is communication planning?
Communication planning is the process that produces the communiction plan based on the results of the stakeholder analysis
What is the input for communication planning?
- Stakeholder list
- Stakeholder management strategy
- Corporate context
- Organizational specifications, templates, etc.
What tools and techniques are used for communication planning?
- Communication requirements analysis
- Communication technology
- Communication models
- Communication methods
What is the output of communication planning?
- Communication Plan
- Update of further project documents
What does the communication plan define?
The communication plan defines content, sender, receiver, medium, frequency and time of communication activities
What is the “What?” of the communication plan?
Information communicated
What is the “When / How long?” of the communication plan?
Time and duration
What is the “How often?” of the communication plan?
Frequency
What is the “Who?” of the communication plan?
Author, sender, approver
What is the “To whom?” of the communication plan?
Recipients / participants, for who's information (fyi, cc)
What is the “Why?” of the communication plan?
Optional: Goal of communication
What is the succes measure of the communication plan?
Optional: Criteria for measuring the success of the respective the communication activity
What is the subject of the communication requirement analysis?
The identification of the stakeholders information needs and habits
What are sources of information and input of the communication requirement analysis?
- Stakeholder analysis
- Required information and its value for stakeholder and project
- Organization charts
- Information about the organizations communication culture and rules
- Already established communication channels between the stakeholders
- Project situation
- Logistic framework conditions (locations, time zones, etc.)
What are tools and techniques applied for the communication requirement analysis?
- Type and format of communication
- Calculate the number of communication channels: N * (N-1) / 2 with N: number of stakeholders to communicate with
- Grouping of stakeholders
- Clearly define and limit who should exchange information with whom (communication paths)
What does the basic model of communication do?
The basic model of communication explains the basic conditions for communication in general
Illustrate the basic model of communication?
Which aspects shoud be considered when planning communication?
When planning communication it’s important to consider the available tools, technologies and conditions:
Technology
Project Location
Stakeholder
How shoud Technology be considered when planning communication?
- Internet connection
-Mailbox sizes
-Electronic communication platforms
-Telephone / Video conference systems
-Security settings
How shoud Project Location be considered when planning communication?
- Number of locations
-Geographical location -> time zones
-Communication equipment
-Number of meeting rooms, their equipment and availability
How shoud Stakeholders be considered when planning communication?
- Reachability (when, how, where)
- Preferred communication channels and style
What are different communication categories?
Interactive Communication
Push Communication
Pull Communication
What are characteristics of interactive communication?
• Between two or more parties
• Multilateral exchange of information
• Most efficient way to achieve common understanding of all involved
• E. g.: meeting, telephone call, video conference etc.
What are characteristics of push communication?
• Send to specific recipients
• Shipped assured
• Reception or understanding by the recipient not sure
• E. g.: letter, email, report, memo, fax, voice mail, press releases
What are characteristics of pull communication?
• Used for very large amounts of information, for very large audience
• Access of the recipients to the communicated content necessary
• E. g.: intranet sites, e-learning, knowledge repositories
What are different communication tools and techniques?
Listening
Speaking
Reading
Writing
Moderating
Negotiating
What is the communication technique “Listening”?
Active Listening
What is the communication technique “Speaking”?
Giving a speech / Speaking in public
Speaking to one person or a smaller number of people, e. g. explaining a task or an idea
What is the communication technique “Reading”?
See Active Listening
What is the communication technique “Writing”?
The Pyramid Principle
Visualizing especially facts and figures
What is the communication technique “Moderating”?
Neuland-Moderation
see trainings offers of TUD’s HDA, e.g. “Trainings in Schlüsselkompetenzen”
What is the communication technique “Negotiating”?
The Harvard Concept
What is active listening?
Active listening is
- a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding.
- a structured form of listening and responding that focuses the attention on the speaker
What are basic rules for active listening?
Look at the person (Visualisation)
Inquire with questions
Stay on target (conentrate)
Test understanding (clarify)
Evalute the process (are you hearing or not?)
Neutralise feelings
What are information indicators to project risks in the context of active listening?
Filler Words
Generalizations
Conjunctives
Softeners
“Killer Words”
What can be said about structuring text?
A good structure is the basis for communicating ideas clearly, understandable and successfully.
What is the Harvard Concept?
The Harvard concept is an effective way to achieve sustainable negotiation results
What are aspects of the Harvard Concept?
1. Treat people and problems separately from each other
2. Focus on interests, not positions
3. Develop choices (options) for mutual benefit
4. Insist on the application of neutral assessment criteria
Last changed2 years ago
