Question

What mechanisms are in place to guide the identification, measurement, categorization, and communication of information to stakeholder and user? whats the difference between users and stakeholder?

Answer 1

Answer- The mechanisms to guide the identification, measurement, categorization, and communication of information to stakeholder and user are discussed below-

Identification-

Stakeholder identification is the process used to identify all stakeholders for a project. It is important to understand that not all stakeholders will have the same influence or effect on a project, nor will they be affected in the same manner. There are many ways to identify stakeholders for a project; however, it should be done in a methodical and logical way to ensure that stakeholders are not easily omitted. This may be done by looking at stakeholders organizationally, geographically, or by involvement with various project phases or outcomes.

Another way of determining stakeholders is to identify those who are directly impacted by the project and those who may be indirectly affected. Examples of directly impacted stakeholders are the project team members or a customer who the project is being done for. Those indirectly affected may include an adjacent organization or members of the local community. Directly affected stakeholders will usually have greater influence and impact of a project than those indirectly affected. While these details are developed and analyzed further in the Stakeholder Analysis process, it is important to begin thinking about them now and helps provide a systematic way to identify stakeholders.

An outcome of identifying stakeholders should be a project stakeholder register. This is where the project team captures the names, contact information, titles, organizations, and other pertinent information of all stakeholders. This is a necessary tool during Stakeholder Management and will provide significant value for the project team to communicate with stakeholders in an organized manner.

Measurement-Two primary ways a company can measure stakeholders engagements are:

1. A ‘consultative’ approach, where the company consults with stakeholders but has the final say on how the project will move forward.
2. A ‘co-operative’ approach, in that joint action is taken by both stakeholders and the project team.

No matter what approach you take, you will benefit from these best practice tips for retaining and measuring stakeholder engagement:

Categorization-There are two main ways to clategorise stakeholders:

Internal vs external

Internal stakeholders are those included within the organisation such as employees or managers whereas external stakeholders are such groups as suppliers or customers who are not generally considered to be a part of the organisation. Although this classification is fine it becomes increasingly difficult in a modern organisation to distinguish the two types when employees might be subcontractors and suppliers might be another organisation within the same group.

Voluntary vs involuntary

Voluntary stakeholders can choose whether or not to be a stakeholder to an organisation whereas involuntary stakeholders cannot. For example a supplier can choose to not deal with the organisation and therefore is a voluntary stakeholder. The local society or the environment are not able to make this choice and must therefore be considered to be involuntary stakeholders.

Communication of information-Anyone can observe or obtain information about incidents and threats. It is ideal for your organization to have a formal information sharing program established, so that users and stakeholders know whom to contact and under what circumstances. In addition, depending upon the situation, various individuals may be involved including individuals from cross-disciplinary teams: communications, legal, information technology, human resources, facilities and others. Information sharing may be internal or it may be external (i.e., with external parties), or a combination of international and external information sharing. (An example is a ransomware attack, which leads to a major breach of patient information that needs to be reported to the media and potentially others.)

The difference between users and stakeholder-

Stakeholder-A stakeholder is a party that has an interest in a company and can either affect or be affected by the business. The primary stakeholders in a typical corporation are its investors, employees, customers and suppliers. However, the modern theory of the idea goes beyond this original notion to include additional stakeholders such as a community, government or trade association.

User-When it comes to determining if someone is a customer, user, or stakeholder, the users are the easiest to classify.A user is anyone who uses your product. They may be inside or outside your organization.Ironically in the case of internal products, users are often taken for granted, especially for products used inside organizations.The line of thought is users didn’t really have a choice whether or not they used a product. It’s their job to use a product, so why care about the experience they had.People do have a choice. And they can be quite crafty in finding ways around using a product that is a pain to use.Or they use the product, but they dread it, and that outlook results in mistakes.