Stakeholders’ Roles and Responsibilities

It is key to the success of a project to identify all stakeholders who are invested in the outcome of the project or will be affected by any organizational change the project may cause. Stakeholders can be internal or external to your organization. Internal stakeholders could include executive leadership, management, project team members, and peers. External stakeholders may be clients, contractors, suppliers or government entities (Watt, 2014, p. 102).

Beyond identification of key stakeholders, their potential impact to the project should be cataloged using a stakeholder analysis spreadsheet. Their estimated influence on the project can be denoted by a simple plus (+), minus(-) or question mark(?) indicating if that individual will be a supporter or blocker to the project objectives. Importance to the project can be ranked from Low to High or with a 1-10 scale. Lastly any assumptions or risks about an individual’s sphere of influence over the project should also be captured and updated throughout the life of the project.