Stakeholders and Related ProjectsAs stated earlier in this book, stakeholders are a critical factor in the eXtreme project management model. What Is a Stakeholder?A stakeholder is a person, group , or organization outside your direct control that is involved with your project. Most stakeholders will provide services (requirements, expertise, equipment, etc.) to your project, receive services (data, functions, etc.), or have a two-way relationship. Stakeholders can be either inside the organization or in another organization. Typical project stakeholders will be IT operations, internal auditing, the organization's business people who will be using the system, IT communications, vendors , project team members, members of the steering committee, the project sponsor, and business analysts. Related projects are other projects within the organization that have an impact on your project or will be impacted by the current project. As for stakeholders, it is also possible for two projects to be interrelated. It is important for you to identify which of the project's stakeholders and related projects are essential to the project's success. We have found it useful to triage your stakeholders into three levels of impact:
In all projects, the team members and your project sponsor are by default critical stakeholders.
As discussed earlier, all critical and essential stakeholders and project managers of related projects must agree to the business case and, where possible, should be involved in the RAP sessions. All critical stakeholders should sign the stakeholder agreement document described later. This document identifies the specific services required from the stakeholder. |