Effective Communication with Stakeholders. Why it is necessary for your project success?
Whether you are a small business or a large corporate organization running projects as part of your business activities, involving the stakeholders rightly in your project is an endeavor that must be undertaken. Stakeholders, as defined by the project management institute in its PMBOK Guide, are people, groups, or organizations that could impact or be impacted by the project. There are several ways in which stakeholders may affect the success of the project, if not managed properly. Communication by the project manager on her project is not limited to the project team members alone, but it also extends to other stakeholders, thereby, carrying everyone involved along on the progress of the project. There are different categories of stakeholders, based on their influence and power that they have on the project outcome. The first step in communicating with your stakeholders is identifying them, then defining strategies of managing each group. After identifying them, you can then group them according to how powerful and influential they are on the project. These categorizations help you focus your communications strategies on beneficial work. Among other reasons for communicating effectively with the stakeholders, reducing the project risk depends on how best you communicate project risks with them. When you communicate the risks, they are able to understand the risks better and also the processes involved in managing risks on the project. They are also able to discover actions that will be taken to mitigate further risks on the project. Also for risks discovered by the stakeholders themselves, they are able to share them with you when you communicate effectively with them. You can also categorize stakeholders based on the form of preferred communication to them. Some set of stakeholders prefer real-time communication, like phone calls, while some others would prefer emails and reports to gain the idea of the status of the project. When you are able to clearly define the strategies of effective communication to them, you will most likely gain their support, thereby having a better chance of success on your project. In conclusion communicating with the stakeholders also has the benefit of helping you build their trust in you, which helps make them able to share a lot of their experiences that are beneficial to the success of the project.