Other Stakeholder Relationships

In addition to developing the project team members , you must maintain an ongoing relationship with the sponsor, client, and other project stakeholders. Although you may not interact with these people as frequently, they are critical to project success. Let's take a closer look at a few scenarios involving other stakeholders: building a productive IT/client relationship, dealing with a disengaged project sponsor, and resolving staffing issues with functional managers.

Relationship Management with the Client

In many organizations, the IT group and its internal business clients are known for having adversarial relationships. This is not healthy for either the people involved or the project itself. If you are the IT project manager, you need to recognize and address any barriers that may be inhibiting an effective working relationship with your client.

A client may not recognize the complex application development required to produce what he or she believes is a simple product feature, but on the other hand, the IT project manager may not fully understand the business impact of this feature.

Clients have a wide range of technical background. The relationship will be much more effective if you establish the client's knowledge of the technology being used. Clients can be frustrated by technical jargon, but they can also be offended if you talk down to them. Asking a few background questions regarding the client's familiarity with the technology in question can guide your discussion to the proper level.

Some basic principles go a long way in maintaining an effective working relationship with a client:

Frequent Communication Regular updates to the client organization are a must. The 'us against them' mentality and the political battles for control will do nothing to improve the relationship. In addition to distributing written status reports to provide the client with a roadmap of project progress, call the client to see if he or she has any questions or would like to meet with you to clarify any aspects of the project. Being proactive sends the message that you will listen to client concerns.

Team Building Client involvement in a project kickoff meeting or any team event or celebration demonstrates that you view them as a critical part of the team and goes a long way to taking down some of those political fences that may have been built between the organizations.

Gaining Consensus Just as you worked with the client to gain consensus during requirements definition in the initiation phase, you need to include the client in the problem solving and issues management. You may resolve purely technical issues, but if they impact the scope or the deliverables, client input is important. A client will not feel ownership in a solution if it was developed in an IT vacuum .

Timely Decision Making A sense of urgency is important. If you need additional information or approval to make a decision, explain the process to the client and provide a commitment as to when your decision will be made.

Managing Expectations Over the course of the project, clients may forget the specifics of requirements, assumptions, constraints, and other information obtained during the planning process. A continued review of the project progress compared to the project plan will reinforce what the client can expect from the project.

Managing by Facts Disputes between IT and client organizations can escalate quickly based on mere rumors or speculation. If you hear that a client representative is unhappy with a project deliverable, get the facts and find out what the real issues are. If the deliverable does not meet the documented requirements, admit there is a problem and work to correct the situation. If a client is asking for something that is out of scope, review the scope statement and requirements to reset client expectations and if needed, walk them though the scope change process.

Managing a Wavering Sponsor

All sorts of kinks can occur to make life challenging for a project manager. As if you don't have enough to do assembling a cohesive team and building a good relationship with your client, you may reach a time during the project where you are not getting the support you expect from your sponsor. Wavering support can manifest itself in a number of ways. Maybe your review meetings are being canceled , or the sponsor suddenly does not have time to talk about project issues. The sponsor may even indicate that you should be able to handle situations that are clearly part of the sponsor role.

A sponsor may back away from a project for a variety of reasons:

• A change in top management may be driving a new corporate strategy.

• Rumors circulating that the project is in trouble may be driving the sponsor to take a handsoff approach.

• The sponsor may have an increased workload.

• The sponsor may be working through personal problems that are taking focus off the project.

Regardless of why the sponsor's commitment to the project has changed, you need to confront the problem and seek a resolution.

Identify the source of the doubts . You need to meet with the sponsor and raise the issue. 'I noticed that your interest and support of this project is not the same level as it was during project planning.' Have all of your concerns organized and list the reasons behind your statement. Ask the sponsor if they have issues with how the project is being managed and what you can do to help correct the situation. The sponsor has a choice of two responses in this situation-they can acknowledge that something has changed or simply deny that there's a problem. Listen not only to what is being said, but what is not said, and watch the sponsor's body language.

Communicate your concerns with care. No matter how you approach the sponsor, this will not be a comfortable situation, but the last thing you want to do is alienate them. Stick to the facts, choose your words carefully , and allow the sponsor time to think through a response. If you come across as criticizing, judging , or accusing, you will more than likely put the sponsor on the defensive.

Utilize allies and influences. If your sponsor denies a wavering support of the project during your meeting, but continues to be unavailable and unsupportive, what can you do next ? You may want to involve others by asking executive allies in your department or other stakeholders who may have influence on the sponsor if they know what the issue is. You can be on very slippery ground here, so make sure you choose these people carefully.

If the situation persists with no resolution, you need to determine whether you should seek a new sponsor or recommend canceling the project. If the sponsor has taken on additional job duties , perhaps sponsorship needs to be transitioned. If the waning sponsor support is instead a signal that the project is no longer viable , letting it die slowly is of no benefit to anyone .

Relationships with Functional Managers

You may have thought that dealing with functional managers are limited to the initial request for project resources. This is rarely the case, as resources that were committed during project planning may suddenly be unavailable. Overall team performance can also be impacted if a planned resource is not brought onto the team as promised or if a functional manager attempts to pull a resource off the project before the assigned tasks are complete.

In this situation, you need to work with the functional manager to try to come up with a resolution that is satisfactory to all parties. You need to know the reason a resource is being pulled from your project and how the functional manager proposes to handle the replacement. If there will be a transition period and the substitute resource can perform the tasks with no impact to the project end result, you may just want to accept the change and work at integrating the new person into the team.

Proposed staffing changes sometimes occur at very critical stages in the project. If you get a call from a functional manager in the middle of the development phase telling you the lead programmer has been assigned to a special project, the negative impact to your project could be great. You want to attempt to resolve the issue by explaining how critical the lead programmer's position is and the impact of making a change at this juncture.

If the functional manager is not willing to negotiate and if the ramp-up time for a new person will delay the project, you need to escalate this situation to your project sponsor for resolution. Be prepared to review with the sponsor the consequences to the project if you lose the lead programmer and explain the actions you have taken to attempt a resolution with the functional manager. The project sponsor can work at the executive level to confirm the priority of the project and the need to maintain resource commitments.

Project execution is the phase that delivers the work results, so in addition to developing your project team and managing stakeholder relationships, you are tracking the overall project performance.