From the course: Project Management Foundations

Analyze project stakeholders

From the course: Project Management Foundations

Analyze project stakeholders

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- [Narrator] It can be challenging to figure out who the stakeholders are for your project, which ones are most important and the best way to work with them. That's where the stakeholder analysis document comes in handy. You can store information there as you identify stakeholders and learn about their part in your project. Identifying stakeholders and their part in the project doesn't happen all at once. You'll figure all that out over the course of defining the project. First, you need to know how your stakeholders are connected to your project and what motivates them. Start by including the department, business unit or company the stakeholder belongs to and their position in the organization. Next, determine who the stakeholder listens to. That can help if you need to figure out how to deal with that stakeholder. You can ask that person how to handle the stakeholder or ask them to help directly. Identify the project objectives that the stakeholder cares about and how they prioritize those objectives. That way you know which stakeholders to talk to if an issue comes up with an objective. Categorize each stakeholder by their influence and interest in the project. That helps you prioritize stakeholders so you can manage the time you devote to working with them. Finally, document the stakeholder's contributions to the project so you know what to expect from them or who to turn to for things you need. For practice, use the stakeholder analysis spreadsheet included with this course. Fill in information about the stakeholders for one of your own projects. In addition, the exercise files include a filled out stakeholder analysis spreadsheet for the hospital scheduling project. Keeping stakeholders happy can be overwhelming and time consuming if you don't know what they want and how they're involved in your project. That's why analyzing your project stakeholders is a key task during project initiation.

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