Subtitles of the Movie

In the previous section we defined who and what Stakeholders are. Our focus for this movie will be in identifying Stakeholders and clarifying a few more details about who they are. Remember that a stakeholder is anyone that affects or is affected by the project. We clarified previously that this entails quite a large group of individuals and that you, as the project manager, are an important stakeholder. Identifying who the stakeholders are is a very important part of the initiating phase of the project. It's something that should happen very early on, if not right after signing the Project Charter. The reason is that we'll need to understand and be aware of who the most influential stakeholders are and what the expectations of all the stakeholders are of the project. But how can we possibly meet the expectations of the stakeholders if we haven't identified them? That's a big reason that we have this process. The project can easily be highly impacted by a key stakeholder who was not identified early on and who later takes on an interest in the project. Sometimes this occurs during the project implementation and the key stakeholder finally becomes aware of the project which impacts their department. If they're influential, they may hold up the entire project. We wouldn't want this to happen in terms of missing a key stakeholder, that is. As stakeholders are identified, the project manager may log this information within a Stakeholder Register. This occurs as a result of Stakeholder Analysis where the stakeholders are analyzed on various levels. Although it results in some sensitive information, it's very useful to prioritize the stakeholders in terms of their level of influence and interest in the project which is a key part of what we'll be analyzing. This will guide you in determining a strategy for managing the stakeholders. Stakeholders generally have different agendas and interests of the project and you should be aware of what they are and to also prepare yourself to deal with scenarios that may cause an obstacle later down the line as a result of hidden agendas. While on the topic of Stakeholders, I'd like to clarify a few titles, those that CompTIA defined for us so that we can all be on the same page for exam purposes. The first is the Project Sponsor. This is the individual who's funding the project and who typically signs off on the Project Charter. The Sponsor is normally an executive in the organization who has the ability to assign resources and make final decisions on the project. The Sponsor is typically not involved in the day-to-day aspects of the project; they're more of a high level. Next is the Project Champion. Think of this individual as the cheerleader in your corner. The Project Champion is the individual who understands and supports the project. You may have heard of a PMO, a Project Management Office, or currently have one. The PMO is a group established within an organization to maintain standards, processes and procedures for managing projects through the organization. It's like having a project management department and they often provide training, support, tools, and even corrective action to project managers. The PMO should align the strategic objectives of the organization and the projects that it oversees. The Project Team Members are those who perform the work associated with the project. They often serve as our experts as well, particularly during the estimating processes. I purposely left the Project Manager last since I'd like to say more about this role than the others. In CompTIA's words, the Project Manager is the person responsible for providing leadership to the team and managing the project and its associated work to ensure that the expected results are obtained. As you'll quickly see within this course, a Project Manager must contain several skill sets. This includes interpersonal skills. Interpersonal skills itself includes the following: leadership, team building, motivation, communication, influencing, decision making, political and cultural awareness and negotiation. The Project Manager must have the ability of doing all of these things. It's certainly a challenging role to take on and definitely not fit for everyone for this reason. And that closes out this overview of Identifying Stakeholders and the various Stakeholder roles that were defined by CompTIA.