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The role of a project manager is a tough one. Between balancing schedules, deadlines, compliance and budgets, you\u2019re constantly being forced to shift and adapt to avoid obstacles along the way. But one of the hardest parts of the job is undeniably managing stakeholders and their priorities.<\/p>\n
Most of the time, the bigger the project, the more stakeholders involved. This can be a major challenge when each stakeholder has a different agenda and definition of success.<\/p>\n
So how do you keep the project moving and keep everyone happy? Well, there is no silver bullet here, unfortunately. But we\u2019ve come up with a set of guidelines that can help you manage stakeholder priorities and mitigate conflict.<\/p>\n
Identify Key Stakeholders <\/strong><\/p>\n This may sound obvious, but a huge source of conflict can arise if all stakeholders aren\u2019t identified and looped in from the very beginning. All the legwork that happens prior to a project will have to be redone if new stakeholders pop up along the way. This can mean pushed deadlines, budget increases and generally unhappy stakeholders. Make sure that you\u2019ve identified, and communicated with, everyone who may have a dog in the fight early in the process.<\/p>\n If there are many stakeholders in a project, it\u2019s often beneficial to identify high-priority and secondary stakeholders. Naturally, those who are high priority will hold more weight and have more pull than secondary stakeholders.<\/p>\n Remember, not all stakeholders will be directly involved in the work. There may be others who are directly impacted by the project and its outcome. And those people need to be involved, too.<\/p>\n Identify Priorities and Potential Conflicts<\/strong><\/p>\n Having a kick-off meeting is a great way to identify the different interests, priorities and perspectives of each stakeholder.<\/p>\n If all goes well, each stakeholder will have similar goals and priorities and the project can move forward with perfect alignment. The reality is, though, that there will likely be a variety of perspectives and wish lists, and they may be competing.<\/p>\n Should this happen, a good way to start prioritizing interests is by asking each stakeholder, \u201cHow does this support our business objective and company goals?\u201d If the answer is that it doesn\u2019t, or that it can\u2019t be clearly tied to a business objective, it falls towards the bottom of the list of priorities.<\/p>\n Having these conversations early in the process helps us avoid future conflict and uncertainty about the project, and gives us a better shot at completing the project successfully and on time.<\/p>\n