Stakeholder-led Project Management (Book Review)

Overview

  • The aim of this book is to provide a stakeholder-centred analysis of projects, and to explain which stakeholder identification, analysis, communication and engagement models are most relevant to different types of projects.
  • Using case studies from around the world, it illustrates what goes wrong when stakeholders are not engaged successfully, and what lessons we can learn from these examples.
  • The book is aimed at project professionals who find themselves involved in managing projects with stakeholders (so that’s just about all of them then!).

What’s inside

  • This book is based on evidence from over 200 project stories gathered over five years, and the common theme of stakeholder engagement as the key differentiator between success and failure.
  • Having first rejected the term “stakeholder management” in favour of the less sinister-sounding “stakeholder engagement”, the book starts with a review of the current state of stakeholder engagement both in projects (opportunities for improvement) and other disciplines (opportunities for cross-pollination).
  • It goes on to present a range of models and techniques for stakeholder identification, action and review, including the use of emerging communications technology.
  • It continues with an analysis of the difference between communication and engagement, before finishing off with a review of the main learning points, and what to focus on to create meaningful engagement in projects and programs.
  • In classic text-book form (was this book written for PM students?) it finishes each chapter with a chapter summary and a series of questions designed to stimulate reflection.

Some of my favourite take-aways

  • The composition of stakeholder groupings changes over time (sponsors and product users during implementation and after Go Live, widening to include sometimes entire countries in the case of infrastructure projects), so need to plan with the end in mind and engage stakeholders who arent yet aware of or interested in the project.
  • If you think you are doing stakeholder engagement and it’s not making a difference to how you run your project, then you aren’t!
  • Effective stakeholder engagement becomes more important the more greater the technical difficulty of the project, and much more important the greater the human difficulty

    “Projects can no longer choose if they want to engage with stakeholders or not; the only decision they need to take is when and how to successfully engage”

  • Role-based stakeholders are defined by a role they have in the project (Client, Decision maker, Expert). Identify them using organisational breakdown structure analysis, project governance checklists, and asking “who else should I be talking to?”
  • Agenda-based stakeholders represent a viewpoint, usually external to the project, which may not be apparent until a crisis emerges. Although they may be silent initially, these stakeholders often have the greatest impact. Identify these using Focus groups, 1:1 interviews, Strategic tools (e.g. SWOT, PESTLE analysis), successive nomination (snowball sampling)
  • Stakeholder-neutral projects have clear, generally agreed outcomes. Engagement peaks at the project start, and again just before transition
  • Stakeholder-sensitive projects have clear outcomes that affect people and practices. These people need to be considered when designing the outcomes, and engaged throughout the project.
  • Stakeholder-led projects are highly influenced by stakeholder groups and individuals, so engagement is critical.
  • Parallel projects are not directly aimed at programme objectives, but are sometimes set up to safeguard critical success factors for another project
  • Good stakeholder engagement:
    • Gives people a say in decisions that affect them
    • Promises that participation will influence decisions – and demonstrates how
    • Seeks out those potentially affected by, or interested in, a decision
    • Seeks input from stakeholders on how they may wish to participate
    • Provides information, time, and space to allow stakeholders to participate in a meaningful way
    • Is polite

The Verdict

  • This book is written in an easily readable style, is not too long (I read it in 3-4 hours, and I was making notes for this review) and has some useful pointers on how to improve stakeholder engagement, drawn from both theory and experience.
  • With the amount of information and ideas in this book, most PM professionals should easily be able to find enough implementable suggestions to justify the cover price; so this book is recommended.


Full title:Stakeholder-led Project Management – Changing the way we manage projects
Author:Louise M Worsley
Publisher:Business Expert Press (New York) 2017
ISBN:978-1-63157-467-2
Pages:191
RRP:£28.45 (review copy supplied free of charge by the publishers)
Rating:****

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Author: Ken Burrell

Ken Burrell is a Programme and Portfolio Office (PMO) Professional, who through his company Pragmatic PMO makes targeted improvements to PMO practices to add value to Projects, Programmes and Portfolios. He provides senior management with the analysis they need to make decisions, and gives project and programme managers the support they need to deliver solutions.

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