What you need to know about stakeholder engagement for a successful project!
The success of your project isn’t just about crafting the perfect project documents like charters, timelines, and action plans. Your project’s success really comes down to the engagement of the people involved.
PEOPLE are where the magic happens on a project.
But how do you ensure effective stakeholder engagement for a successful project?
Here are some tips that will ensure your stakeholder engagement is on the right track.
#1: Confirm the vision
Your stakeholders need to be locked into your project, and the best way is to understand the project’s vision.
Every stakeholder is a little bit different regarding what you’ll share about the vision.
For senior executives, sponsor, and your steering committee, they need to understand the high-level vision of the project and how it ties into the strategy, because that’s what they’re focused on.
When it comes to your team members, they need to have much more detail about the vision. They should know why the project is happening, but they also need to get into the nitty gritty details to ensure that they’re executing in ways that will effectively achieve the overall vision.
#2: Discuss assumptions early
Things don’t have assumptions; people have assumptions.
This is huge in projects because assumptions can derail the project if you don’t highlight them.
You need to speak to every stakeholder about what those assumptions are, and you need to document those assumptions and ensure everything is super clear.
This is a great way to keep stakeholder engagement true to what you’re delivering from the beginning to the end of the project.
Addressing assumptions is a simple thing to do that makes a world of difference in your project!
More tips on stakeholder engagement
If you want to learn more about stakeholder engagement so that you lead a successful project, head over to YouTube with me and watch my latest video where I share lots more about that.
Meanwhile, if you really are committed to mastering your next project, do consider taking my SLAY Project Management online course where I show you step-by-step how to successfully manage a project, plus you get access to every template you will need, along with detailed video instructions on how to fill them out.
Adriana Girdler, PMP | Creator of Slay Project Management™
