PM Insights: Managing stakeholder expectations

Over the next few weeks here on the Project World blog we're going to be featuring some of the insights shared at the 2011 Your Space session at the ProjectWorld® & World Congress for Business Analysts® event.

A repeat favorite, Your Space offers PW&WCBA attendees a chance to debrief on topics covered, come up actionable plans for their return to the office and share in the collective knowledge and expertise of other PW&WCBA attendees and speakers  

This week's topic comes from Table 5: Managing stakeholder expectations

This is obviously a huge topic for PW&WCBA attendees. The main problem that we saw emerging was that stakeholders get missed or overlooked or are otherwise not engaged or participating in the project, and this leads to overruns on time or budget or conflicts that derail progress.

The group at table five identified some strategies for preventing this and managing expectations more effectively:
• Using methodology or diagrams to identify all stakeholders
• Keeping stakeholders informed and engaged  with regular status updates on milestones & deliverables
• Define scope, define the project upfront, including risks and end date and educate the stakeholders on cost, time and materials.
• A lot of and clear communication
 • A documented approval process
• Prioritizing what is included in each release and understanding what a stakeholder is wanting a certain feature
• Stakeholders coming together in agreement on prioritizing issues as an outcome of testing or what is not in release
• Staying proactive to prevent reactive
• Be brief in your presentations, 3 min elevator speech
• Present stakeholder with all information about project steps
• Spend time to understand requirements, include end steps

What would you add to this list? Have you found a particular tactic effective for managing stakeholder expectations?

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA and the voice behind the @Project_World twitter. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com