Driving Clarity in Stakeholder Management

In this chapter, we’ll discuss the stakeholder management process, from determining who your stakeholders are to building a comprehensive communication plan. We’ll discuss what is different about stakeholder management in the tech industry and explore how the communication plan differs from program to project.

We’ll dive into the following topics:

• Driving clarity in stakeholder management

• Managing stakeholders in a technology landscape

• Exploring the differences between a project and a program

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Overview

Stakeholder management is the art of managing expectations. Each stakeholder has a different set of goals for the project, and their point of view will vary from others. The communication plan helps you draft ways to communicate that span the different needs of your stakeholders.

There are two aspects to setting up a good communication plan: defining the types of communication you need and discovering who your stakeholders are. We’ll cover the different types of communication first, because this is usually done only once at the company or team level and is reused from project to project, with only minor modifications. The list of stakeholders will vary for every project, depending on who the stakeholders are, and may require minor tweaks to the communication types.

The table below lists the different communication types that are common across the industry along with examples of recurrence, owners, and distribution methods: