Managing the Project Interfaces 187Politically astute project managers will pay close attention to
who these people are.
What Do You Need to Know About Stakeholders?
As we’ll soon see, stakeholders can be in any department or at
any level within the organization. You’ll constantly be interfacing
with stakeholders throughout the life of your project. This leads
us to another critical consideration: what do you need to know
about stakeholders to properly manage your relationship with
them? Here some of the key things you should try to learn
about project stakeholders:
Who They Are (by Name). Make sure you know who each
stakeholder is—by name. Don’t be content to recognize that
classes of people (such as functional supervisors) are stake-
holders. Figure out every individual stakeholder.
The Nature of Their Stake.What do they stand to gain if you
succeed—or lose if you fail? How much? In what way? Does the
outcome of the project affect them professionally or personally?
What They Expect from You.You can best find out what they
expect by meeting with stakeholders individually. Since this is
time-consuming, you may want to limit face-to-face meetings
to key stakeholders, such as clients or management sponsors. If
there are differences between what they expect and what you
believe they should reasonably expect, you’d better work those
differences out as soon as possible.
What You Expect from Them. This is, of course, the flip side of
the previous item. However, some project managers have diffi-
culty expressing their expectations to members of management.
If you feel this way, bear in mind that stating expectations does
not mean that you’re telling them what to do or how to act. If
you express your expectations of management correctly, it
should seem more like a description of the support you need
than a prescription for their behavior.
Their Priorities.In this case, the term “priorities” refers to the
four major elements of success and control that we discussed