Project Stakeholder Management

Today almost every project takes place in a context where stakeholders play a major role in the accomplishment of the tasks. Often the project is sensitive to actions and decisions taken by the stakeholder. Project stakeholders can include clients, end users, contractors, consultants, labor unions, line organization, public authorities, financial institutions, insurance companies, controlling organizations, media, third parties, and competitors. A survey was conducted among project managers in Norway to collect their views on stakeholder management. First, research results indicate that clients and end users are the most important project stakeholders. Second, collected data show clients, end users, contractors/suppliers, line organization, and public authorities are equal when it comes to causing problems and uncertainty for the project. Third, the findings indicate that more efforts should be made to provide new insights into project stakeholder management. Furthermore, the article describes a formal and systematic project stakeholder management process. This process includes six steps: initial planning, identification, analysis, communication, action, and follow-up. The results from this article can be of use for a project manager in several ways. First of all, we argue that more attention should be paid to the stakeholders. Second, in managing the stakeholders the project manager can follow the process presented here. Third, the survey results can give the project manager an idea of which stakeholders to focus on in order to understand them better.