What are Stakeholders?

The Project Management Institute's (PMI) Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge defines it as:

Project stakeholders are individuals and organizations who are actively involved in the project, or whose interest may be positively or negatively affected as result of project execution or successful project completion. The project management team must identify the stakeholders, determine their needs and expectations, and then manage and influence those expectations to ensure a successful project.

Stakeholder Roles & Responsibilities

Customers

Customers are those who will use or support the product or service resulting from the project. They may be internal or external to AIS. Customers are responsible to be actively involved in the project to help ensure its successful completion. Some projects may have difficulty identifying specific customers because the customers cover a large range of individuals (e.g. systems software to be installed for use by all of AIS). Specific customers should still be identified to ensure that the customer responsibilities and interests are protected. This might be done by identifying the project coach and/or project manager as the customer representatives or a small number of customers could be selected to represent the interests of the broader group of customers.

Project Manager

The Project Manager is responsible for directing the project's resources; developing the project plan; and ensuring that the project is completed on time, within budget, and with acceptable quality. The manager also plays a primary role interfacing and coordinating with customers and management.

The project manager:

• Ensures the overall success of the project.
• Applies lessons learned from recent projects.
• Manages to project priorities.
• Acts as a catalyst to resolve project problems and conflicts, escalating when necessary.
• Assesses strengths and weaknesses at project completion, and applies knowledge gained to his or her next project.
• Ensures that impacted teams are involved and informed as early as possible in the project management process.

Project Team Members

The Project Team Members are responsible for performing the work to accomplish the project objectives. The team members may be drawn from within, or outside of, AIS. Team membership may vary over the duration of the project, or more typically, the level of team member involvement and project contributions may change during the project.

Project Coach

The Project Coach is responsible for:

• Ensuring that the project has clear direction and support.
• Ensuring that the project plan is developed.
• Providing the resources to support selected projects.
• Providing guidance to ensure successful project completion.
• Making the final decisions on project issues pertaining to the overall scope of the project.

Long-term Home Team

The product being developed by the project team will require ongoing support after implementation. The Long-term Home Team is the team responsible for the ongoing support or maintenance of the implemented product. If the Long-term Home Team is not responsible for the project itself, the Project Manager must make special effort to involve the Long-term Home Team in various aspects of the project. This is needed to facilitate the successful transition of product responsibilities from the Project Team to the Long-term Home Team and insure that ongoing maintenance issues are considered in the product development. Similarly, other AIS internal teams may need to be involved in the project where ongoing support or maintenance issues should be considered. The Long-term Home Team must be involved with the Project Team in the following project tasks:

• Project plan development/review
• Design review
• Long-term Home Team training
• Documentation turnover to Long-term Home Team
• Identification of recurring budget/staffing needs
• Implementation date timing
• Product turnover