Key ideas we learned from Chapter 3

Chapter 3   Know Your Key Stakeholders and Win Their Cooperation

1. Stakeholders of a project are the people and organizations involved in the project performance or affected by the project.  Stakeholders are the heart of a successful project.  Identify and define stakeholders in the project, keep all the disparate groups in a project moving in harmony are the primary tasks and challenges for a good project manager.
2. Various stakeholders in the project acting as different roles, making contribution to or being impacted by the project.  Normally stakeholders include project manager, project team, management sponsors, customers, representatives from external constraints, and even the people and organization who become advocate or opponents.
3. Project manager itself is one of the most important stakeholders who play a primary role in the project. He or she not only needs to  plan the project, identify the stakeholders, watch the cost overruns, and referring disputes, but also needs to help building the project team by pulling together resources from different groups and individuals with various skill set and functions.
4. Getting strong support from top management is the critical key for success of a project. These management supports should at least include those who can take the sponsorship, allocate resources, and have authority to make decisions for this project.  The project sponsor should be the one with formal authority and who is ultimately responsible for the project.  So he or she may provide strong help to PM in various aspects.   Manager in industry who control the resources are usually the function managers, they can help PM to build the best team for this project.  In addition, PM should identify some key management, who may not be the project sponsor, but have the authority and can make timely decisions that will have direct impact to the project.
5. Customers usually play a big role among different stakeholders. Customers are the stakeholder who will have the demand, make the requirement, and sometimes pay the bills. Project manager should accurately identify them, understand their requirement, and work with them to define quality dimension of the cost-schedule-quantity equilibrium.
6. Project manager should also pay attention to some minor stakeholders such as representatives of external constrain and who may potentially advocate, opponent the project. A good project manager should be able to exercise leadership with this diverse group, influence and manage upward to conduct all the stakeholders working toward the project goal.