England 09/03/2013
Stakeholder management is a vital component of any project, so getting it right is crucial to success.
Delivery of any project requires every individual or organisation involved in that project to play their part. Everyone involves needs to deliver their part of the project in its entirety and do so on time. On large projects, the project manager needs to know who should be doing what and when. This means that they have to track the progress of each element to make sure each stakeholder understands what is required of them. They also need to communicate the timescales required to each stakeholder. Most project managers use software such as that available at http://www.qbase.net to help them to achieve this. This software gives the project manager an overview of progress, and, importantly, gives stakeholders a central point to check what is needed of them. All communication about the project takes place via the software, so all information about the project is archived in one place.
Stakeholder management is extremely important, the bigger the project the more important it is. In a modern world, where many large projects involve companies from across the world it is vital that everyone works to the same standards. This smoothes communication and helps everyone to work in the same way and dovetail together. To achieve this synergy a set of international standards are needed, and they already exist in the form ISO and IEEE standards. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) pulls all these standards and best practices together in one place. A recent revision of the PMBOK focuses mainly on stakeholder management, which demonstrates the importance of managing stakeholders
Absorption of the new standards
As with all new standards, it will take time for these changes to be adopted fully by the project management community. QBase, who produce a range of software including stakeholder management software, will be working hard to change their software to take account of the new standards. They are also taking a close look at the new ISO 21500:2012 standard, which is also set to have a significant impact on how large projects are managed in the future.