Question

Sometime Project managers experience the dilemma in managing stakeholder's expectations. This can be explained as difficult because of the sometimes widely different objectives of the various groups of stakeholders. Illustrate with examples how the Project management team can manage the Stakeholders cycle.

Answer 1

Project Managers experience dilemmas in managing stakeholder's expectations. This is due to fact that different stakeholders have different and sometimes conflicting interests.

Some of the stakeholders in any project are workers, clients, and organization among others.

Some of the examples of dilemmas while managing projects are:

1. The client want the project completed within less time but it would increase project costs against the interest of the Project Manager's own organization interest.

2. Workers do not want to work extra time without extra pay while the client does not want to bill for extra hours, considering we have pay per hour contract for the project.

3. The Quality Assurance team does not have the extra manpower to manage Project deviations. The organization needs to clear immediate hirings.

To resolve these dilemmas the project manager needs to manage the stakeholder cycle. The steps in the stakeholder cycle are:

a) Engagement and Interaction

b) Issues Identification and Clarification

c) Resolution and Key Actions

d) Outcomes and Dialogue