Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.

Project Management

Topic 2
Stakeholders and Requirements

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 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.2

Learning Objectives

By the end of this topic you will be able to

• Describe and analyse stakeholders.
• Manage stakeholder relationships.
• Understand the collection and analysis of
requirements.
• Explain how project requirements are managed
and validated.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.3

What are Stakeholders?

What is a stakeholder?
• A person with an interest in the project.
• A group with an interest in the project.
• The internal stakeholders are part of the team or
organisation.
• The external stakeholders are part of the environment.

(Wysocki, 2017)
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.4

What are Stakeholders?

Why are stakeholders important?

• They may be able to influence the project.
• They may be affected by the project.
• Their influence may be positive, bringing benefits.
• Their influence may be negative, causing problems.
• They may be involved during project execution.
• They may be involved because of the outcomes of the
project.
(PMBOK® Guide, 2017)
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.5

What are Stakeholders?

Categories of project stakeholder (1)

• The client and the client’s representatives.
• End users.
• Team members including the project manager.
• Other employees of the business delivering the
project.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.6

What are Stakeholders?

Categories of project stakeholder (2)

• Sub-contractors, suppliers and collaborators.
• Intermediaries.
• Governments and regulators.
• Society and communities.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.7

What are Stakeholders?

Stakeholder map example

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.8

What are Stakeholders?

Two different perspectives on projects

1. The market perspective: the project client is always right.
2. The social contract perspective: all stakeholders have
negotiable interests in the project.
(Freeman & Reed, 1983)

R. Edward Freeman has been called the “father of stakeholder theory”

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.9

Stakeholder Analysis

A five step process for stakeholder analysis

1. Identification – who are they?

2. Mapping – where do they fit in?
3. Assessment – what is their power and impact?
4. Planning – how will the project manage them?
5. Monitoring – what could change?

(Wysocki, 2017)
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.10

Stakeholder Analysis
Mendelow’s power-interest grid

(Mendelow, 1991)
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.11

Stakeholder Analysis
Mitchell & Agle’s salience model

(Mitchell, Agle & Wood, 1997)

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.12

Stakeholder Analysis

Using a rating scale to analyse stakeholders

stakeholder strongly moderately neutral moderately strongly
against against supportive supportive
Person A
Person B
Person C
Group 1

Group 2
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.13

Managing the Stakeholder Relationship

Providing stakeholders with information

• Who needs to be told?
• What information is required?
• When is the information required?
• What form should the information take?
• Who will supply the information?

Information flows in both directions!

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.14

Managing the Stakeholder Relationship

Understanding stakeholders using empathy

• What do the stakeholders see and hear?
• How do the stakeholders behave?
• What do they believe and feel?
• What are their aspirations?
• What are their worries?
• How does their culture affect their attitudes?

Using empathy, a project manager tries

to walk in the shoes of each stakeholder
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.15

Managing the Stakeholder Relationship

Stakeholder management log

stakeholder stakeholde level of level of level of actions owner date of
name r type impact influence commitment needed next
review

A simple tool for helping to manage stakeholders

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.16

Managing the Stakeholder Relationship

A framework for stakeholder management

preconditions

information stakeholder decision-making

inputs analysis

sustainable support

(Yang & Shen, 2014)

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.17

Managing the Stakeholder Relationship

The input-tools-output framework

inputs tools outputs
project plan analytical stakeholder
techniques management plan
stakeholder register meetings project document
updates
environmental judgement
factors
organisational
capabilities

(PMBOK® Guide, 2017)

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.18

Obtaining Project Requirements

The two big requirements tasks

1. Obtaining the requirements.
2. Managing the requirements.

• Words which mean the same as obtaining: gathering, capturing,

elicitation.
• Managing means how the requirements are handled after they have
been obtained.
• With agile methodologies, the obtaining/managing tasks are done
together in each iteration of a cycle.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.19

Obtaining Project Requirements

Classification of requirements (1)
• Functional.
– the business capabilities: what the product or solution should do.
• Non-functional.
– engineering qualities such as speed, resilience and capacity.
• Legal and regulatory.
– including security, privacy and data protection.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.20

Obtaining Project Requirements

Classification of requirements (2)
• Architectural.
– conformance to standards, patterns and rules.
• Deployment.
– related to delivering the product/service/solution into operations.
• Operational.
– Running costs, skills and training needed to operate.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.21

Obtaining Project Requirements

Techniques for obtaining requirements (1)
• Surveys.
• Interviews.
• Focus groups.
• Observation.
• Market analysis.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.22

Obtaining Project Requirements

Techniques for obtaining requirements (2)
• Product management.
• Subject matter experts.
• Feasibility study.
• Modelling.
• Prototyping.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.23

Obtaining Project Requirements

Obtaining requirements – other considerations (1)

• Review of documentation.
• Establishment of baseline.
• Analysis of environment and infrastructure.
• Analysis of deployed estate.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.24

Obtaining Project Requirements

Obtaining requirements – other considerations (2)

• Migration, compatibility and road-mapping.
• Supplier and sub-contractor relationships.
• Business data management.
• The commercial contract.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.25

Managing Requirements

How requirements are managed

• Classified, organised and explored in detail.
– These tasks are together known as analysis.
• Validated.
– Resolving conflicts, removing redundancies, asking the client for more information.
• Costed, prioritised and negotiated.
– The client may be asked to choose which requirements should be implemented.
• Specified.
– Convert the requirements from the client’s language to a form in which they can be
understood by the project team. This may include writing engineering documents
using technical codes.
• Requirements management support.
– E.g. change control and tracing.
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.26

Managing Requirements

Difficulties with requirements (1)

Why might the project requirements be wrong?

•Scope creep.
•Arbitrary weightings.
•Bias or value judgments.
•Numbers are not always truthful.
•Inconsistency or conflict.

The details of requirements management will vary between sectors

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.27

Managing Requirements

Difficulties with requirements (2)

•False compromise.
•Hidden or implied requirements.
•Unrealistic requirements.
•Weakness of natural language as a specification tool.
•Failure to distinguish the important from the trivial.
•You don’t know what you don’t know.

Working with requirements is a role for specialists

with job titles like business analyst
 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.28

Managing Requirements

The project management triangle

“We require all
features to be
delivered to high
quality” “We require the
project cost
to be low”

“We require the project to be completed very quickly”

You can have any two … but never all three

 Stakeholders and Requirements Topic 2 - 2.29

References

• Freeman, R.E. and Reed, D.L., 1983. Stockholders and stakeholders: A new perspective
on corporate governance. California management review, 25(3), pp.88-106.
• Mendelow, A., 1991, December. Stakeholder mapping. In Proceedings of the 2nd
international conference on information systems, Cambridge, MA.
• Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R. and Wood, D.J., 1997. Toward a theory of stakeholder
identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy
of management review, 22(4), pp.853-886.
• Wysocki, R. (2017) Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme. New York:
Wiley.
• Yang, R.J. and Shen, G.Q., 2014. Framework for stakeholder management in construction
projects. Journal of Management in Engineering, 31(4), p.04014064.
Topic 2 – Stakeholders and Requirements

Any Questions?