For the PMP Certification Exam, you should know that when you’re first initiating and planning your project, you should spend time identifying your stakeholders and determining how to best leverage them for the good of your project. When you first identify stakeholders for your project, you may have created a Power/Support grid to analyze stakeholder involvement in your project.
During planning, you may have created a stakeholder engagement assessment matrix to show a stakeholder’s initial support for your project and the desired level of support for your project.
The power/support grid and stakeholder assessment matrix are key components that help you develop your stakeholder management plan. In this process, you will revisit the stakeholder management plan to determine whether it’s having the intended effect or you need to revisit the plan and find more effective ways to engage the project stakeholders.
Control Stakeholder Engagement. Monitoring overall project stakeholder relationships and adjusting strategies and plans for reengaging stakeholders.
The project management plan contains the stakeholder management plan and the communications management plan that provide information on how to engage and communicate with stakeholders. The power/support grid and stakeholder assessment matrix are key components of the stakeholder management plan that help develop the stakeholder management plan.
In this process, you will revisit the stakeholder management plan and compare it with work performance data to determine whether it’s having the intended effect or you need to find more effective ways to engage the project stakeholders.
| Stakeholder | Unaware | Resistant | Neutral | Supportive | Leading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manny | B | A | |||
| Jocelyn | B | A | |||
| Jamie | B | A | |||
| Kim | B | A |
Assume that your issue log has an entry that indicates that Manny (the community affairs liaison in HR) was interested in having an auditorium space at Cynergy, Inc., to communicate with large groups of people from the community. In the beginning of the childcare center project, it looked like both projects were viable.
However, Morgan Cuthbert (the sponsor) has just told Manny that because of lower than projected sales, she is forced to choose between the auditorium and the childcare center, and she has chosen to put the auditorium on hold. At this point, you’re concerned that Manny will no longer be such a strong supporter of your project. In fact, he may even become a resistor.
You look over the minutes from the last three meetings and notice that even though Manny was invited, he did not show up. Further research reveals that he was supposed to have attended a grand opening for Baby Gap as a way of showing community outreach and talking about the childcare center at Cynergy, Inc.
You have found out that he cancelled at the last minute. This type of work performance data and project documentation help you to build a clearer picture of Manny’s current engagement level in the project. He has gone from unaware, to supportive, to at the very best neutral, but possibly even resistant.
To control Manny’s engagement level, you will want to meet with him — and possibly other stakeholders — to determine his state of support and see how you can get him actively engaged in the project again.