Identify Stakeholders

00:01 Hello and welcome.

00:02 This module will focus on the identify stakeholders process in the Bot guide.

00:10 The difficulty is rated as medium because you may not have done stakeholder engagement management so explicitly before, memorization is low because there's not a lot of new concepts we're introducing to you and the exam importance is rated as medium. The identified stakeholders process is one of four processes in total that make up the stakeholder management knowledge area.

00:34 It's the only initiating process and it focuses on the identification of stakeholders and putting that information into a stakeholder register. There's also a single planning process: the plan stakeholder management process.

00:50 There's a single executing process, managed stakeholder engagement, and there's also a single monitoring and controlling process the control stakeholder engagement process. Now, even though they're presented in what seems to be a left to right linear sequence, that's not how you should see them.

01:08 You don't do identify stakeholders first, then do plan stakeholder management, then to manage stakeholder engagement and then to control stakeholder engagement. Each of these processes can actually happen concurrently.

01:22 Yes, naturally, you would start with plan stakeholder management to develop a stakeholder management plan and use that stakeholder management plan to help you identify stakeholders and develop the stakeholder register, then also manage stakeholder engagement with different engagement strategies.

01:39 And you'll also use that management plan to control stakeholder engagement.

01:43 But all of these things can happen at the same time, and they can all be subject to successive iterations as well.

01:53 The particular domain tasks that they identify stakeholder process helps us to understand better are tasks three and eight from the initiating process.

02:05 Task three says perform stakeholder analysis using appropriate tools and techniques in order to align expectations and gain support for the project.

02:18 Initiating Task eight says inform stakeholders of the approved Project Charter in order to ensure common understanding of the key deliverables, milestones and their roles and responsibilities.

02:33 So you will be tested on both of these domain tasks in the PMP exam.

02:40 The key themes of the identify stakeholders process are that it is the process where we seek to identify all project stakeholders.

02:49 And most of this identification is done at the beginning of the project.

02:53 But it does continue throughout the life of the project as we as new stakeholders are identified and perhaps our analysis of existing stakeholders changes, because that's the other thing we're going to do here.

03:05 We're going to analyze their needs, their expectations, their power and influence, and use this analysis to design effective engagement strategies in order to influence them.

03:21 Let's start, though, by defining exactly what a stakeholder is.

03:27 A stakeholder is any person or organization that can affect or be affected by your project.

03:35 So obviously, this could be quite a broad range of people and organizations. I'd like to add to that a stakeholder is any person or organization that can affect or be affected by your project in perception or reality.

03:52 Just to make it even broader.

03:54 And it is important that you identify each of these stakeholders and onto the stakeholder register, you put their contact details, a description of what their interest in the project is.

04:07 Maybe some description about what their expectations are and then rank them or prioritize them.

04:14 So you know which stakeholders are the more important ones to focus on.

04:18 And once you've done this, you can then proactively manage them, and what you want to do here is influence their expectations.

04:29 You want them to support your project or at least not oppose it.

04:32 And that is one of the primary goals of the whole stakeholder management knowledge area.

04:39 Now let's take a look at the inputs that could be useful to us in this process. The first one is the project charter, which you'll recall is an output from the developed project charter process.

04:53 Now there are only two initiating processes in the entire PMBOK guide.

04:58 One is the Develop Project charter process, and this one identifies stakeholders is the other.

05:05 The project charter is important.

05:07 Here is an input because it will describe what we know about the project at this very early stage in the project, but it may also contain information about stakeholders that have been identified at this early point.

05:22 We'll also want our procurement documents now the procurement documents that contracts and agreements that we might have signed at this very early stage in the project. And obviously a procurement document or contract.

05:37 It is an agreement between two or more parties.

05:40 Now those parties to the contracts become very important stakeholders as well, and we need to know that information at this early point.

05:49 We may also go looking for relevant and appropriate enterprise environmental factors, such things as government regulations, industry standards around stakeholder identification.

06:02 We're probably also turned to our relevant organizational process assets like aspects of our project management methodology, such as a blank stakeholder register. The particular tools and techniques that we may want to use, if appropriate, include stakeholder analysis, which, as the title suggests, is just a way to analyze and ultimately categorize and prioritize our stakeholders.

06:32 And in a moment, I'll show you some of the models that you could use to analyze stakeholders. We'll, also use expert judgment and remember you are the expert your project team members are experts to your project sponsor is an important expert here because they may know some of these early stakeholders in this first iteration of our stakeholder register.

06:55 So reach out to the appropriate experts and get their opinion and get their expertise on stakeholder identification.

07:04 We may want to do this through meetings and have meetings that are specifically devoted to stakeholder identification or meetings with one part of it is on stakeholder identification.

07:17 I always like to keep stakeholder identification at the forefront of everybody's minds.

07:23 Just in case we forget one or two stakeholders, so I always include it as a regular agenda item on weekly meetings that I might choose to run. Here's some ways to analyze and represent power and influence of stakeholders.

07:43 This is a fairly standard way.

07:45 It's called a power and interest matrix.

07:47 And what we're trying to do here is to determine which stakeholders we should manage closely, which we should keep satisfied, which we should, we should simply monitor and which ones need to be kept informed.

08:01 So this matrix tells us that those stakeholders with high levels of power and high levels of interest or influence, we need to manage them particularly closely.

08:16 Stakeholders with a high level of power, but a lower level of interest or influence. Well, we want to keep them satisfied.

08:25 A low level of power and a high level of interest or influence.

08:28 Keep them informed.

08:30 And even though stakeholders who have a low level of power and a low level of interest or influence, we still need to monitor them just in case one of those factors changes.

08:43 Another way to examine the power or influence that stakeholders may have on your project is to use the salience model now the salience model categorizes stakeholders according to the power, the legitimacy and urgency that they have.

09:00 So a stakeholder that has lots of power, but no legitimacy or urgency is considered dormant.

09:06 You need to watch them because if they gain legitimacy or become urgent, they could become dominant or dangerous or even definitive.

09:15 A stakeholder that has legitimacy, but no power or urgency is called a discretionary stakeholder at your discretion.

09:25 You'll use your stakeholder engagement strategies on them, but again, be be aware if that legitimate stakeholder gains power, they then become dominant. If they gain urgency, they become dependent.

09:38 And if they gain both, they become definitive.

09:41 So that's just another way to prioritize stakeholders.

09:46 I personally simply like to give each stakeholder a ranking of power and influence, impact or interest.

09:57 Usually I set up a scale of, say, one to five or one to ten for each of those, and I'll give each stakeholder a score with power, pay or whatever the 'i' category is that I'm using interest, impact or influence. And then I'll multiply those two numbers together and get an absolute score for that stakeholder.

10:19 Now the score isn't that important, but what I can then do is list all of my stakeholders by this score and figure out which are the most important.

10:28 Whichever method you choose to use, whether it's the power and interest matrix, the salience model or a simple analysis of power and interest influence or impact, the key point here is we're trying to figure out which stakeholders are most important to manage.

10:43 Keep in mind that proactively influencing stakeholders is absolutely critical to project success.

10:51 You may have a very successful project, but some stakeholders think it's an absolute failure because you haven't managed their expectations correctly.

11:01 The single output from the identified stakeholders process is the stakeholder register and all the successive iterations of it.

11:10 Remember, this isn't a single or a one time event.

11:15 The development of the stakeholder register will continue throughout the life of the project, and in it you will put the relevant information about the stakeholders. The stakeholder register will contain information about their contact details and also what their interest or influence in the project is.

11:34 So in summary, the identify stakeholders process is where we develop a stakeholder register that identifies the stakeholders. It does put their contact details what their interest in the project is and their expectations.

11:51 It describes them and analyzes them in terms of power and influence or the salience model. I've often found that the stakeholder register and the communications register can overlap because one of the key components or key focus areas of communications management is the influencing of stakeholders. So these two areas do go together very, very closely. Now do pay particular attention to stakeholder management, because it's one of the key soft skills that a project manager must have.

12:24 Now the research tells us consistently that it's not the hard skills or technical skills of a project manager, which are the greatest contributors to project success. So it may come as a surprise to you that it's not your ability to put together a defined scope statement, put together an agreed budget or project schedule.

12:46 It's actually your ability to communicate with people.

12:51 Now, whether this is communicating with people, those people are your team members and you're tuning them to a high performing team with your leadership and interpersonal skills, or whether it's communicating with other stakeholders and proactively influencing them to support your project or at least not oppose it.

13:07 It's these soft skills that we know are the most important predictor of project success.

13:14 So do pay particular attention to this area, and don't underestimate the importance of successful stakeholder identification and subsequent expectation management in the exam.

13:28 So thank you very much.

13:30 This has been an introduction and an overview to the identify stakeholders process in the PMBOK guide.