6 Stakeholder problems you can avoid
A stakeholder is either an individual, group, or organization that’s impacted by the outcome of a project or a business venture. Stakeholders have an interest in the success of the project and can be within or outside the organization that’s sponsoring the project. Stakeholders are essential because they can have a positive or negative influence on the project with their decisions. There are also critical stakeholders, whose support is needed for the project to exist.
Whether internal or external, all of the projects that you manage have stakeholders. One of the main reasons projects fail is because the deliverables are not what the customer wanted, or they did not meet the customer’s needs. To ensure project success, it helps that you know all of the key stakeholders on your project, how they prefer to communicate, what their needs are, and what the acceptable results are.
The fact of not engaging stakeholders during your project will increase and cover risks and decrease their “buy-in.” When stakeholders are adequately engaged, their influence spreads far and wide.
Without the involvement of stakeholders during the monitoring & control phase, projects lose:
- Competitive advantage
- Better decision making
- Cost savings
- Risk management
- Financial support
- Last but not least, Stakeholder Buy-in
