Please respond to the following prompts: Why do you think the publisher of your

Question

Please respond to the following prompts:

Why do you think the publisher of your textbook created a separate knowledge area for stakeholder management?

What are some ways to identify project stakeholders?

Which stakeholders do you think are often not identified when they should be?

What are some ways to manage a stakeholder relationship closely?

Give examples of how you might manage relationships differently based on the unique personalities of different people. Discuss ways that you have seen people manage stakeholder engagement in your class- room or work environments.

Which approaches seem to work the best?

Describe the type of information that is documented in an issue log. How can you avoid spending too much time documenting and tracking issues?

How can software assist in project stakeholder management?

Do you think social media tools are more likely to help or hinder projects?

Explanation / Answer

Prompt 1: Why do you think the publisher of your textbook created a separate knowledge area for stakeholder management?
Ans: Stakeholders are persons or organizations (e.g., customers, sponsors, the performing organization, or the public) who are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by the performance or completion of the project. Stakeholders may also exert influence over the project, its deliverables, and the project team members.Stakeholders can, literally, make or break a project, either by their support for a project or by their interference in a project. The cost of making a change based on a request by a stakeholder goes up throughout the project, so it is important to prevent changes by engaging the stakeholders as early as possible and to create an understanding of the stakeholders interests as early as possible.Stakeholder management requires a distinct knowledge area,thus raises the importance of engaging the stakeholders to same level as the other Project Mamangement knowledge areas.

Prompt 2: What are some ways to identify project stakeholders?
Ans: The stakeholder identification process is one of the most important processes in project management because projects are undertaken to fulfil the requirements of stakeholders.

The following are the steps involved to identify the stakeholders:
1. Your project is successful if your stakeholders are happy. If stakeholders are not satisfied, then your project will not be completed successfully. Therefore, you must identify the stakeholders at the beginning of the project and manage them throughout the project’s life cycle.This process starts as soon as the project charter is created.
2. Start with the Project Charter : The project charter is a document which authorizes the existence of a project and appoints a project manager. This document contains high-level project information such as the project objectives, budget, schedule, assumptions, and constraints, the name of the project sponsor, the name of top management, etc.
3. Review the Contract Documents : If the project is undertaken due to any contractual agreement, you should review the contract agreement to find the stakeholders mentioned in the contract.The contract agreement can provide you with the names of suppliers, local agents, contact people from the client’s side, etc.
4. Review the Organizational Process Assets and Enterprise Environmental Factors : A review of the enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets can provide you with many stakeholders.
From the organizational process assets, you can get a stakeholder register, as well as the lessons learned from past projects which may provide some information about the stakeholders.
The government is a key stakeholder for any project and you must maintain a good working relationship with various government authorities. Their support can be critical to the success of your project. From enterprise environmental factors you can acquire information about which government entity is your stakeholder. A review of the governmental regulations and industry standards can help you find more stakeholders.
5.Interview the Experts :
You don’t have to interview all stakeholders. This practice should be limited to highly influential stakeholders and is to be done on a one-to-one basis. By interviewing the experts, you can gain a great deal of information about the stakeholders.
6.Conduct Brainstorming Sessions:
Conducting a brainstorming session is a good method to collect information on any given subject. You can use this tool to identify stakeholders for your project. You can hold brainstorming sessions with your team members and experts.

Prompt 3 :Which stakeholders do you think are often not identified when they should be?
Ans: The stakeholders do you think are often not identified when they should be are :
    1. The media
    2. People in positions that convey influence. Clergy members, doctors, CEOs, and college presidents are all examples of people in this group.
    3. Community leaders – people that others listen to. These might be people who are respected because of their position of leadership in a particular population, or may be longtime or lifelong residents who have earned the community’s trust over years of integrity and community service.
   4.Business. The business community usually will recognize its interest in any effort that will provide it with more and better workers, or make it easier and more likely to make a profit. By the same token, it is likely to oppose efforts that it sees as costing it money or imposing regulations on it.
   5.Advocates. Advocates may be active on either or both sides of the issue you’re concerned with.
   6.Community activists. Organizations and individuals who have a philosophical or political interest in the issue or population that an effort involves may organize to support the effort or to defeat it.
   7.People with academic or research interests related to a targeted issue or population. Their work may have convinced them of the need for an intervention or initiative, or they may simply be sympathetic to the goals of the effort and understand them better than most.
   8.Funders. Funders and potential funders are obvious key stakeholders, in that, in many cases, without their support, the effort won’t be possible.

Prompt 4 :What are some ways to manage a stakeholder relationship closely?
Ans: Some of the ways according to a specific stakeholder are :
    The promoters – the high influence/high interest folks – are the most important here. They’re the ones who can really make the effort go, and they care about and are invested in the issue. If they’re positive, they need to be cultivated and involved. Find jobs for them (not just tasks) that they’ll enjoy, and that contribute substantively to the effort, so they can feel responsible for part of what’s going on. Pay attention to their opinions, and accede to them where it’s appropriate. If their ideas aren’t acted on, make sure they know why, and why an alternative seems like the better course. As much as possible, make them integral parts of the team.

    When people who could be promoters are negative, the major task is to convert them. If you can’t, they become the most powerful opponents of your effort, and could make it impossible to succeed. Thus, they need to be treated as potential allies, and their concerns should be addressed to the extent possible without compromising the effort.

    The latents – high influence/low interest. These are people and organizations largely unaffected by the effort that could potentially be extremely helpful, if they could be convinced that the effort is important either to their own self-interest or to the greater good. You have to approach and inform them, and to keep contact with them over time. Offer them opportunities to weigh in on issues relating to the effort, and demonstrate to them how the effort will have a positive effect on issues and populations they’re concerned with. If you can shift them over to the promoter category, you’ve gained valuable allies.

    Once again, there’s the possibility that these folks could be negative and oppositional. If that’s the case, it might be best not to stir a sleeping dragon. If they’re not particularly affected by or concerned about the effort, even if they disapprove of it, the chances are that they’ll simply leave it and you alone, and it might be best that way. If they begin to voice opposition, then your first attempt might be at conversion or neutralization, rather than battle. If that doesn’t work, then you might have to fight.

    The defenders – low influence/high interest. In the business model, since these people and organizations can’t help you much, you can simply keep them informed and not worry too much about involving them further. In health and community building, however, they can often provide the volunteer time and skills that an effort – particularly an advocacy initiative – needs to survive. These are often the foot soldiers who stuff envelopes, make phone calls, and otherwise make an initiative possible. They are also often among those most affected by an effort, and thus have good reason to work hard for or against it, depending on how it affects them.
    The apathetics – those with low interest and low influence. These people and organizations simply don’t care about your effort one way or the other. They may be stakeholders only through their membership in a group or their position in the community; the effort may in fact have little or no impact on them. As a result, they need little or no management. Keep them sporadically informed by newsletter or some similar device, and don’t offend them, and they won’t bother you or get in the way.

Prompt 5: Give examples of how you might manage relationships differently based on the unique personalities of different people. Discuss ways that you have seen people manage stakeholder engagement in your class- room or work environments.
Ans: Some stakeholders may have economic concerns. Sometimes these concerns are merely selfish or greedy – as in the case of a corporation with billions in annual profits unwilling to spend a small part of that money to stop its factories from polluting – but in most cases, they are legitimate:
      
       A classic case is that of the conflict between open space preservation and the opportunity to sell land for development. Farmers and other rural residents often have almost no other assets but their land. If, by selling it, they can become instant millionaires and live comfortably in retirement after working very hard for very little all their lives, why should they be expected to pass up that opportunity in favor of open space preservation?

       In some U.S. states, farmland has been preserved by the state’s paying farmers the development value of their land (or something close) in return for a legal agreement to always keep the land in cultivation or open space. Conservation easements – agreements never to develop the land, no matter how many owners it goes through – sometimes are negotiated on the same basis.

Prompt 6: Which approaches seem to work the best?
Ans: The approaches that work really well are :
   1.Treating them with respect
    2.Providing whatever information, training, mentoring, and/or other support they need to stay involved
    3.Finding tasks or jobs for them to do that catch their interest and use their talents
    4.Maintaining their enthusiasm with praise, celebrations, small tokens of appreciation, and continual reminders of the effort’s accomplishments
    5.Engaging them in decision-making
    6.Employing them in the conception, planning, implementation, and evaluation of the effort from its beginning
    7.In the case of those who start with little power or influence, helping them learn how to gain and exercise influence by working together and developing their personal, critical thinking, and political skills

Prompt 7:Describe the type of information that is documented in an issue log. How can you avoid spending too much time documenting and tracking issues?
Ans: The type of information documented in an issue log are problems, gaps, inconsistencies, or conflicts that occur unexpectedly in the lifecycle of a project. Issues can include problems with the staff or suppliers, technical failures, material shortages, or any other problem which might have a negative impact on the project.
We can include the following information in an issue log and try to be specific such that only the relevant information is gathered:

    Issue Name : The name of the issue can be recorded .

    Issue Type : By defining the categories of the issues that are likely to be encountered in the project, a project manager can track issues and assign them to the right people to resolve them. A few categories that can be included in this column are as follows:

   Technical : These are the technical issues in the project .

   Resource : These are issues related with human resources , equipment or materials in the project.
  
   Third Party : These are issues related with vendors , suppliers or any outside third party .

    Raised By : The name of the person who raised the issue can be recorded in this column.

    Date Raised : The date when the issue was raised can be recorded in this column.

    Description : The issue can be sufficiently described in this column. The description of the issue can include the impact that the issue may have in the project and the project objectives which may be affected by these issues.

    Priority : A priority rating can be assigned to each issue in this column. Priority ratings can be high , medium or low, based on the impact the issue may have on the project.

    Assigned To: The name of the person who is responsible for the issue can be included in this column .This person may or may not be responsible for resolving the issue. However, he or she is responsible for tracking the issue and ensuring that the issue is handled based on its priority.
  
  
    Target Resolution Date: The deadline for resolving this issue can be included in this column.

    Status: The progress in the resolution of the issue can be tracked in this column. The progress can be indicated through labels like open, implementing or resolved.

    Final Solution : A brief description of the solution that was implemented to resolve the issue , can be included in this column.

Prompt 8:How can software assist in project stakeholder management?
Ans :Software can deal with managing of stakeholders' details and can help to primarily focus on the requirements.Software reduces the mismanagement and reduces teh human errors
and thus help in the quality of the project.

Prompt 9:Do you think social media tools are more likely to help or hinder projects?
Ans: Social media can really boost the project development.As it can help in creating groups which people can use to take help of each other and solve any issue in the project .
Social media is also a great advantage if someone wants to know the sentiments of the stakeholders and implement them accordingly in their project.

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