Managing Stakeholders:

When managing stakeholders keep the following in mind:

Who are the stakeholders? 

You need to identify all of the stakeholders at the start of the project or you may have additional requirements revealed in as stakeholders are added after the project has already started.

What are their requirements?  

You need all of the requirements at the start of project (and what requirements which will not be included). Without them your project may have delays, cost overruns or possibly fail.

How to communicate to them during the project? 

This needs to be defined at the start of the project. Determine what the frequency of communication and what it will include (typically it is concise and brief and focused on progress and value). If including project metrics, all measures of the project elements must be meaningful to the project stakeholders.

Keep the project vision visible! 

Keeping the project vision accessible allows everyone involved in the project to stay focused on what's important. The benefit is that it helps reduce the chance of scope creep.

Keep them involved!  

It is important that during the project the stakeholders are kept involved by things such as: being a risk response owner, engage them in problem solving, reviewing new requirements and creation of lessons learned.

What is done? 

Stakeholders need to agree what done looks like. If they don’t, the project may be off track before it starts.