Anyone involved in or affected by a project.
Really? That seems like potentially a lot of people. Yes, the PMBOK defines stakeholders as: an individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project, program, or portfolio.
The project manager will strive to have a productive working relationship with stakeholders throughout the project. Depending on the characteristics of the project and the environment, this alone can be a challenge. It could be 5 people, 50 people, or 500+ people. To keep track, the project management will run a stakeholder analysis to gather quantitative and qualitative information about everyone to determine whose interest should be taken into account and when. To add complexity, there may be different stakeholders at different phases of a project and their power, influence and interest may change as the project unfolds.
What does working and collaborating with stakeholders look like? The project manager with work with them to introduce the project, extract requirements, management expectations, resolve issues, negotiate, prioritize, problem solve, and facilitate decisions. This calls on the application of soft skills such as active listening, interpersonal, leadership, and conflict management.
Want to learn more about Project Management? See my Project MGMT publication for these 30 key PM topics:
Projects, lifecycle, management, manager, methodologies, the triangle, stakeholders, deliverable, team, charter, scope, budget, schedule, planning, baselining, milestones, dependencies, resources, risk, procurement, communication, ceremonies, integration, backlog, whiteboard, closure, software tools, office(r), code of ethics, body of knowledge
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