Managing stakeholder expectations starts with a stakeholder’s analysis, a tool that helps to keep everyone engaged and informed throughout the project.
Conducting a stakeholder analysis includes the process for identifying key stakeholders, internal or external to an organization, that might be impacted by the organization’s decisions, projects, products, or change efforts. Based on the individual stakeholder’s or stakeholder groups’ level of participation, interest, or influence in the business activity, it is important to determine how best to involve each individual or group.
Developing specific influence strategies to gain support from each group and to include their input can help leading to a higher project success rate.
To download the customizable Stakeholder Analysis (in Microsoft PowerPoint), please add the Stakeholder Analysis template to your cart and hit check out below.
Conducting a stakeholder analysis often includes a variety of techniques to identify and understand the needs and expectations of the various stakeholders that might exist. In some cases, the list of stakeholders might be extensive. When this occurs, it is important that the project team evaluate the stakeholder’s need for involvement in the project with regard to the stakeholder’s level of influence over the project. Through this analysis, the project team can arrive at a prioritized list of stakeholders that need to be actively engaged, differentiating them from stakeholders that might just need to be informed about the project’s progress.
All of our tools and templates are available in Word or PowerPoint format to allow organizations to purchase and customize the templates to their brand standards.
Managing stakeholder expectations throughout the project is an ongoing activity. Identifying, assessing, and prioritizing stakeholder needs is a critical step in ensuring the project team is operating with the customer’s and business’s needs in mind. This topic is a core concept of change management. To learn more about sponsoring projects, please visit our Introduction to Change Management Certification Course.
The change agent plays a critical role in the success of an organization’s change initiatives. Change agents know the stakeholders well and actively engage the key stakeholders in project updates, decision making, and in the design of solutions.
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