Plan Stakeholder Involvement

Stakeholders are identified from all phases of the project life cycle by identifying the type of people and functions needing representation in the project and describing their relevance and the degree of interaction for specific project activities. A two-dimensional matrix with stakeholders along one axis and project activities along the other axis is a convenient format for accomplishing this identification. Relevance of the stakeholder to the activity in a particular project phase and the amount of interaction expected would be shown at the intersection of the project phase activity axis and the stakeholder axis.

For the inputs of stakeholders to be useful, careful selection of relevant stakeholders is necessary. For each major activity, identify the stakeholders that are affected by the activity and those who have expertise that is needed to conduct the activity. This list of relevant stakeholders will probably change as the project moves through the phases of the project life cycle. It is important, however, to ensure that relevant stakeholders in the later phases of the life cycle have early input to requirements and design decisions that affect them.

Examples of the type of material that should be included in a plan for stakeholder interaction include:

• List of all relevant stakeholders
• Rationale for stakeholder involvement
• Roles and responsibilities of the relevant stakeholders with respect to the project, by project life-cycle phase
• Relationships between stakeholders
• Relative importance of the stakeholder to success of the project, by project lifecycle phase
• Resources (e.g., training, materials, time, funding) needed to ensure stakeholder interaction
• Schedule for phasing of stakeholder interaction

Conduct of this specific practice relies on shared or exchanged information with the previous Plan for Needed Knowledge and Skills specific practice.