PRINCE2 7 Project Stakeholders
PRINCE2 Projects will impact people from across the organizational ecosystem. Therefore, a project must involve those with a formal role in the project team and key people affected by or critical to the project’s success (who may not hold a traditional role).
These people are the stakeholders in the project and will cover the full spectrum of users, suppliers, and the business. Stakeholders can be external to both the project team and the business.
A stakeholder is any individual, group, or organization that can affect or be affected by (or perceives itself to be affected by) the project.
A strong understanding of the relationships between the project and the organizational ecosystem and the ability to identify key stakeholders at the interface between the two is fundamental to leading successful change.
Stakeholders are the key influencers, who may be the following:
- senior executives
- those found in the user, supplier, or wider operational communities within the organization undertaking day-to-day tasks and decision-making
- those who can shape the perception of the majority within the project ecosystem
- those who can be identified by considering the bottlenecks where information, knowledge, and money flow across interfaces (for example, document controllers, technical experts, and commercial managers)
- the people the project management team needs to work closely with to ensure the project’s success.
Speaking to people in the areas impacted by the project to learn who holds the knowledge in their area and is best informed on how things will practically work.
These are the people, through their network, who can have the most significant influence on the adoption of the project products and the realization of project benefits. Taking time to understand their perspectives on the project and any constraints they have will help improve project delivery.
Stakeholders at the interface with the project may change over time as the project evolves and relationships develop, and how a project is established should support relationship-building across interfaces. This can be found through regular meetings and working groups that build a shared understanding of different perspectives, project data, and knowledge agreed on by stakeholders.
For some projects, all the suppliers could fall within the project ecosystem as they are uniquely engaged for the specific project and have no other relationships with the business.
Understanding where the business, supplier and user interests sit in each ecosystem helps decide how they will be represented on the project and how they will be engaged.
