As a project manager, stakeholder management is key discipline that you should get the mastery in.
Step 1 – Identify all people, organisations, regulatory bodies and everyone who will be related to your project work. Use the following table to understand the definition of Stakeholders and make a comprehensive list of stakeholders of your project.
Step 2 – Now that you know who all are your stakeholders, segregate them based on Power / Interest grid. This is also referred as Influence / Impact grid or Stakeholder Matrix. You can use the method of 4 R’s as Rights, Responsibilities, Relations, Revenue.
Step 3 – It is the time now to create the Communication Strategy covering all your stakeholders. Answer the questions given below, ideally for all stakeholders, alternately for all the key stakeholders.
For every communication in the project e.g. Planning, designing, progress reports, escalations, announcements, and any other type, define the answers for following questions –
- Source of communication
- Target audience / recipients
- Purpose of communication like asking inputs, informing decisions, progress update, escalations and others
- What is frequency e.g. Daily, weekly, and others
- Which is mode / channel for communication like email, face-to-face, public announcements, internal / external facing, and others
