Question

in considering the importance of stakeholder engagement and communication in project management, compare and contrast in the example listed below the selected activities or actions and offer suggestions for additional activities/actions to keep a project within scope and schedule

Positive stakeholders are those who benefit from a successful outcome of a project and ensure they cooperate to attain success. Negative stakeholders see benefit in a project failure and their presence can undermine or disrupt any efforts or progress. A project is most at risk from those negative stakeholders especially when they are not accounted for.

          Stakeholder engagement is necessary to properly control resistance while encouraging support. When “stakeholders are continuously consulted and updated on the progress of the project, resistance is minimized and support for project activities can increase significantly” Focusing on proper communication whether utilizing push, pull or interactive, ensure progress information is readily available as needed. This will encourage members to air grievances or concerns throughout the project. The level of engagement with each stakeholder will vary depending on influence, interest, and power. The assessment matrix is a great tool for determining engagement levels with each individual.

          A method to communicate the real time progress, time and schedule of projects to stakeholders is through PM software. “Project management software is software designed to track the development of projects that take weeks, months or years to complete, providing project managers and other team members a single platform for real-time updates on the project's status” (O’Loughlin, 2019). Some of the most popular and highly reviewed include Workzone, Workotter, Monday.com, Cora PPM and Smartsheet. Some of the benefits offered by these software platforms include centralized workspace, document management, collaboration capability, dashboards, a project database.

          Creating a communication schedule prevents sporadic info being disseminated leading to ill-informed stakeholders. Communication must be constant and re-occurring. Knowing how often to communicate can be assisted by utilizing the stakeholder engagement assessment matrix. Some of the factors which are weighed include emotional involvement, motivation, influence and information desired. This grid allows a PM to categorize and code stakeholders in order to properly communicate and engage with them. Members would be classified as either unaware, resistant, neutral, supportive or leading. “Not adequately identifying and managing around negative stakeholders, who may benefit from the project's failure, may also endanger the project” (Mindedge, 2014).

Answer 1

IMPORTANCE OF STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT and COMMUNICATION IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Engagement is not only communicating but the active participation of stakeholders in decision making. It is important because management portfolio provided an easily coordinated communication approach and this can be done by following ways-

• Needs of customer easily identified and managed
• Stakeholder engagement gained by effective consultation and involvement.

ACTIONS THAT KEEP THE PROJECT WITH IN SCHEDULE AND SCOPE

• Stakeholder consult and update on the progress of the project.
• Support for project activities.
• Ensures progress information on the project by proper communication.
• Always interact with ready information so that members are always encouraging.
• Proper use of PM Software leads to proper communication which helps in project progress.
• Constant and recurring communication.

SUGGESTED OFFERS FOR ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

• Managing expectations of the customer and staff members.
• Documents control and effectively updated PM software data.
• Keep awareness and commitment high.
• Have a communication feedback system to check the authenticity of the communication.
• To maintain momentum stakeholders involve in the workshop.