PMP Certification: Project Stakeholder Management Tips (based on PMBOK® Guide, 6th Edition)


Project Stakeholder Management Terms

by Project Management Process Group

1. Identify Stakeholders


  • Salience Model. A stakeholder classification model for charting  stakeholders power, urgency, and legitimacy.
  • Stakeholder. An individual, group, or organization involved in or affected by project activities, such as project manager, sponsor, and customer.
  • Stakeholder Analysis. A three steps technique – identification, analysis, and classification – for documenting and prioritizing the project stakeholders and their expectations and requirements.
  • Stakeholder Classification Grid. A stakeholder classification model that plots stakeholders by their power/interest, power/influence, or influence/impact.
  • Stakeholder Register. A prioritized list of all of the project’s stakeholders and the pertinent information about them, such as their interest in the project, the power they have to influence the project, their expectations, and how their expectations will be managed.

pmp 2018 project stakeholder management tips pmbok guide 6th edition tipsographic

Project Stakeholder Management Tips

by Project Management Process Group

1. Identify Stakeholders


  • External Project Stakeholders. The external stakeholder group generally includes external project’s end users, competitors, suppliers, government officials, and other external groups potentially involved in the project or affected by it.
  • Influencing of Stakeholders. The PMP exam places a great emphasis on stakeholder influencing.  Influencing is the process of managing and changing stakeholder expectations and requirements of the project so that they support the project, or at least do not oppose it.
  • Internal Project Stakeholders. The internal stakeholder group generally includes sponsor, project manager,  project team, internal customers, functional or operational managers, project management office (PMO), program office, and many more.

2. Plan Stakeholder Engagement


  • pmp 2018 101 free online training tipsographicStakeholders Expectations. From the perspective of the stakeholders involved in the project, what they are expecting as the project outcome, they consider the project requirement. Thus, by addressing the various concerns of the stakeholders, the project manager actually manages the successful outcome of the project.
  • Stakeholders in Leading Role.  A stakeholder taking on a leading role is actively involved in making sure the project is a success and invests time and energy into winning others’ support to the project.
  • Stakeholder Engagement Plan Vs. Communication Management Plan. The stakeholder engagement plan focuses on the reasons for communicating  – e.g., consequences of sharing information on stakeholders engagement. The communication management plan stresses the methods of communication – e.g., communication channels.

3. Manage Stakeholder Engagement


  • Proactive Stakeholder Concern Management. A proactive project manager avoids situations escalating to the point of becoming issues and, in case of higher probability/impact risk events, uses an issue log to minimize the adverse impact of those situations that do end up as issues.
  • Proactive Stakeholder Engagement Management. A proactive project manager continuously engages stakeholders in an appropriate manner to get their support for the project and ensures that can understand and meet their expectations.
  • Push Vs. Pull Forms of Communication. In push communication, information is sent from a sender to a recipient. In pull communication, receivers need to collect the information by themselves.

4. Monitor Stakeholder Engagement


  • Manage Stakeholder Engagement Vs. Monitor Stakeholder Engagement.  In the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process, a project manager follows the stakeholder management plan.  In the Monitor Stakeholder Engagement process, a project manager asks if the stakeholder management plan is working and may recommend changes to the plan.

Click here for a detailed analysis of each project management process group and knowledge area.

SOURCES: Project Management Institute (2017). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). 6th ed. Newtown Square: Project Management Institute.

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