by DharamCW | Jan 13, 2024 | Project Management
Managing the Unexpected | Project Management | Thomas Walenta | Dharam Singh | Episode 59
In the face of uncertainty, exemplary project management is about planning and adapting. Join Thomas Walenta and me in a critical discussion on “Managing the Unexpected” in project environments.
We uncover:
✨ Strategies for becoming a “Highly Reliable Organization” (HRO)
✨ The art of navigating supply shortages and leading transformation amidst chaos
✨ Building robust crisis models for the modern landscape
✨ Identifying opportunities when projects veer into the unknown
Episode 59 is a treasure trove of wisdom for senior project, program, and portfolio managers seeking to steer their teams with resilience and foresight.
Don’t let unpredictability unsettle your projects. Arm yourself with the insights to manage risks and champion change.
Prepare to transform challenges into success stories.
🎯 For Project Management professionals eager to elevate their careers, seize this chance:
– Book an obligation-free 15-minute session with me: http://bit.ly/2SbhTOK
– Stay updated with our Q&A series and certification success stories by subscribing to the vCare Project Management YouTube channel at https://bit.ly/2YF0wJl
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– Avail Exclusive offers on our website: https://bit.ly/3jWVepD
by DharamCW | Jan 7, 2024 | Program Management
Letter to Future Program Portfolio Manager | Justin Buckwalter | Dharam Singh | Episode 10
In our latest webinar episode, Justin Buckwalter joins me to delve into the future of program and portfolio management. As the business world rapidly evolves, professionals in our field need to stay ahead of the curve. This episode, “Letter to Future Program Portfolio Manager,” is a must-watch for those aspiring to shape the future of this dynamic industry.
We discuss vital topics for the future of program/portfolio management, including:
– The evolving landscape of program/portfolio management in 2023 and beyond.
– Challenges faced by C-Suite executives and board members in adapting to change.
– The increasing importance of professional judgment over intuition in decision-making.
– Key competencies and skills will be crucial for future program/portfolio managers.
– Navigating disruptions and the digital transformation in program/portfolio management.
– The significance of training and development for insightful, balanced, and innovative management.
– The role of shared innovation in fostering long-term global client relationships.
– Debating the reality of future-proofing projects, programs, and portfolios.
👀 Discover insightful perspectives on preparing for the future in program and portfolio management. Watch now: https://youtu.be/yOeUdSaRs2M
Join the conversation and share your thoughts on these forward-thinking topics.
🎯 For Project Management professionals eager to elevate their careers, seize this chance:
– FREE webinar series registration on PgMP® & PfMP®: https://bit.ly/3Z7kzMl
– Book an obligation-free 15-minute session with me: http://bit.ly/2SbhTOK
– Stay updated with our Q&A series and certification success stories by subscribing to the vCare Project Management YouTube channel at https://bit.ly/2YF0wJl
– Follow my podcasts and interviews with Project Management Experts on YouTube at https://bit.ly/2NDY8wd
– Avail Exclusive offers on our website: https://bit.ly/3jWVepD
by DharamCW | Sep 8, 2023 | General
From a strategic standpoint, the PMO is critical in project management. Unlike project management, which focuses on the day-to-day operations of a project team, the PMO serves as a framework for project managers, offering PMO methodologies and templates for managing programs inside an organization. In addition, it manages the project management resources required to sustain and deliver projects.
Project management offices (PMOs) are evolving from purely administrative to strategic roles. They are rethinking PMO operations, adopting new technology, and implementing new project management operating models. The evolved PMO is a new PMO concept that is gaining traction. A creative, strategic, and adaptive PMO designed to help modern organizations deal with the volatility of today’s market conditions.
![Functions Of A Project Management Office](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/1.png)
Functions Of A Project Management Office
Functions of a Project Management Office (PMO)
A project management office (PMO) is the foundation of a successful project management strategy in a business. It is a function that gives decision-support information but does not make choices.
A project management office (PMO) supports project delivery mechanisms by ensuring that all business change in a company is controlled. PMOs perform various duties, and their services depend on the department’s maturity and the PMO personnel’s talents. At its most basic, the PMO assists project management teams in making funding, prioritizing, and resource choices. The most mature PMOs provide the following:
1. Governance: The PMO ensures that the appropriate individuals make the correct decisions based on pertinent information. Audits or peer reviews, designing project and program frameworks, and maintaining accountability at all levels are all part of the governance role.
2. Transparency: The PMO delivers information as a source of truth. Information should be relevant and accurate to promote good decision-making and be presented to individuals understandably.
3. Reusability: The PMO fosters knowledge sharing. This aspect prevents project teams from reinventing the wheel and positions the PMO as the hub for lessons learned, templates, and best practices.
4. Delivery support: By minimizing bureaucracy and offering training, coaching, mentoring, and quality assurance, the PMO makes it easier for project teams to accomplish their duties.
5. Traceability: The PMO manages paperwork, project history, and organizational knowledge.
In reality, most PMOs will do various tasks and offer services tailored to the organization’s requirements.
How Business Agility Drives A Shift In Focus For Today’s PMOs
Forward-thinking companies are fast learning that “simply getting the job done” will not equip them for long-term company success. To be successful in business today, firms must provide products and services that satisfy their clients while constantly innovating to grow their markets.
Historically, PMOs were responsible for managing tactical operations that supported project development and implementation. Today’s Corporate leaders recognize that to stay ahead of the market; they need to exploit new possibilities while limiting unanticipated risks – this necessitates a new approach to planning, building, and delivery. Maintaining consistent levels of project success involves more than an organized strategy; it demands a company’s collective attitude to accept required disciplines while staying flexible enough to respond to changes in their business.
1. A major project fails — badly: When an expensive, strategic initiative fails in a competitive market, it compels a company to rethink its strategy. A third of the organizations polled cited a big failure as the impetus for shifting emphasis.
2. A project goes over budget: An underlying driver is cost reduction; project success at higher-than-expected costs decreases profitability and damages customer relationships.
3. A PMO aids a strategic project to succeed: Success, on the other hand, is a catalyst for change. Therefore, the following important reason for building a strategic PMO would be to capitalize on the momentum produced by the successful project.
4. Market competition forces stronger disciplines: Maintaining market share and growing at a controllable rate encouraged larger firms to create consistency to innovate. The capacity to pivot and explore possibilities prompted smaller businesses to establish a strategic PMO.
Key Factors to a Successful PMO Transformation
Established businesses and fast-growing firms are both adapting to changing business environments brought on by competition, acquisitions, developing technology, and new risks. As a result, the importance of alignment, built-in quality, transparency, and the capacity to execute across various project endeavors has never been greater. Innovative design thinking, continuous delivery, excellent quality, and a never-ending drive for improvement are some of the essential characteristics of a modern-day PMO. Here are some causes driving PMO evolution and the seven elements required to turn a typical PMO into a transformation management office (TMO).
Drivers behind the PMO Evolution
Due to increased external business environment constraints, businesses must achieve rapid and substantial value from their projects and initiatives. This aspect means shorter delivery cycles, the adoption of developing technologies, and regularly changed priorities for the PMO. To achieve this transition, the PMO must move its focus from project execution technique to value-driven business results. Change drivers are often aligned with three fundamental needs:
![Drivers behind the PMO Evolution](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/2.png)
Drivers behind the PMO Evolution
1. Capacity and skills:
- Specific domain areas of technical expertise required
- Extra capacity required
2. Rapid Execution:
- Organizations require rapid execution to address immediate concerns
- No time to plan, but need to execute now to meet deadlines (e.g., regulatory compliance dates)
3. Innovation:
- Legacy project management no longer meets expectations
- Value focus, agility, quality, and continuous improvement are required
![Transformation Management Office Critical Factors](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/3.png)
Transformation Management Office Critical Factors
Critical Factors to Consider
1. Leadership: TMO core values of alignment, built-in quality, transparency, and program execution must be completely embraced by leaders. They must adopt an agile mindset, emphasizing respect for people and culture, flow, innovation, and continuous development while cultivating a culture of trust and safety when setbacks occur.
2. Organizational Agility: Processes at the program and project levels must be improved to deliver value quickly while allowing companies to restructure and adapt to changing priorities.
3. Lean Portfolio Management: Goals for funding and execution must be aligned around workstreams that bring value to business priorities. Organizations may use this to optimize operations throughout their project portfolio. In addition, governance, monitoring, and decision-making for programs and projects should be decentralized to decrease overhead while boosting agility.
4. Enterprise Solution Delivery: The whole software development life cycle can be aligned with a DevOps methodology that refines and coordinates the work product across workstreams, supply chains, and suppliers to achieve and sustain continuous delivery.
5. Agile Product Delivery: Methods for delivering programs must begin with a customer focus and design thinking while aligning the continuous-delivery pipeline to a release cadence that provides optimum value to the customer.
6. Team and Technical Agility: Teams must be high-performing and cross-functional, with the knowledge and competence to design and execute high-quality solutions and work products aligned with customer-focused business goals.
7. Continuous-Learning Culture: Investing in being a learning organization is critical for employee transformation. Employees must be empowered to discover and uncover future value by embracing innovation and design thinking. Continuous improvement of solutions, processes, and products should be a priority at all levels of the business.
The evolving role of the PMO in digital transformation
Digital transformation has swept across organizations of all shapes and sizes to keep up with the growing expectations and needs of an increasingly digitized world. However, more people are learning that successful digital transformation entails transforming core cultures, structures, and techniques and integrating digital tools. Therefore, the function of the PMO in organizations must adapt to accommodate this shift as organizations evolve to accommodate this change.
According to a PWC study, 70% of organizations had or were working on a digital transformation strategy before the pandemic. Digital transformation may provide several benefits, ranging from better operational efficiency and product quality to increased customer satisfaction and lower development expenses.
However, PMOs have become linked with bureaucratic processes and unnecessary documentation. Their role must develop beyond the conventional limitations of “standards enforcers” to embrace their strategic role as change agents fully. Future PMOs must be at the forefront of emerging technology and implement various tactics that will allow the organization to make the most of available technologies.
![Five ways the PMO drives digital transformation](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/4.png)
Five ways the PMO drives digital transformation
Five ways the PMO drives digital transformation
1. PMOs can inspire and encourage change
The PMO’s role is to assist organizations in gaining the support of all key stakeholders for a digital transformation. Teams are more inclined to invest in digital projects if the transformation’s advantages are personal. PMOs may implement explicit feedback mechanisms to ensure that all important input is easily supplied, reviewed, and acted upon.
2. PMOs act as the strategic arm
PMOs must ensure that their digital transformation plan is consistent with the organization’s overall strategy. For example, investing in high-end software is pointless if your company is attempting to save money and merely needs essential project management tools. PMOs must also comprehend the strategic benefit of digital technology investments and be able to quantify, justify, and carry out plans.
3. PMOs provide support and insight
Digital transformation programs are frequently large-scale enterprise-wide undertakings that need ongoing support and higher-level knowledge to influence their development. For example, PMOs may assist employees via virtual portals with the help of a PPM solution while also gathering Big Data to help evaluate the new technologies’ success and efficiency.
4. PMOs properly manage transformations
Introducing new technology frequently entails forming new teams and learning new skills to ensure a successful adoption process. Managing digital transformation entails guaranteeing the availability of relevant resources, skills, feedback mechanisms, and data collection procedures. PMOs can monitor the full effect of digital transformation activities, manage possible bottlenecks or pressure spots, and optimize ongoing operations.
5. PMOs enable successful digital adoption
PMOs are essential in getting people excited about digital initiatives and driving further use of the tools or processes. PMOs may assist employees in understanding the value of digital technologies by delivering interactive demos and holding learning sessions. When more individuals utilize the application, there is more data to accurately analyze the overall performance of digital activities.
Project Governance and its components
Project governance is an oversight position that includes the project life cycle. It is tied to the governance model of the organization. It provides the project manager and team with structure, processes, decision-making models, and tools for effectively managing and controlling the project. Project governance is critical, especially for complex and risky enterprises. It defines, documents, and communicates consistent project processes to give a whole way of project control and success. It includes a framework for making project choices, defines roles, obligations, and liabilities for project completion, and controls the project manager’s performance.
![Components of Project Governance](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/5.png)
Components of Project Governance
Components of Project Governance
According to PMI, eight project governance components offer real-world value:
1. Governance Models
The organization should develop a baseline of important aspects required for project governance based on the project’s scale, duration, complexity, risk, stakeholders, and relevance to the company.
2. Accountability and Responsibilities
The project manager’s primary responsibility is to define accountability and obligations. An organization’s operations will only be successful if accountability and obligations are adequately distributed. Therefore, the project manager must specify who is accountable, responsible, consulted, and alerted for each project’s deliverables.
3. Stakeholder Engagement
It is essential to thoroughly understand the project environment while setting the groundwork for your governance plan. The first stage is to identify all of the stakeholders. If even one stakeholder is excluded, it can disrupt the entire project and have a negative impact. One must identify stakeholders from various sources, including sponsors, suppliers, the project team, government boards, company owners, etc. The project manager must identify the stakeholders, their interests and prospects, and, most critically, how to interact with them.
4. Stakeholder Communication
The project manager must design a communication plan after identifying all stakeholders and describing their interests and expectations. A well-planned communication strategy provides all stakeholders with concise, efficient, and timely information.
5. Meeting and Reporting
Once the communication strategy has been properly designed, the project manager ensures that the optimal mix of meetings and reporting is in place. It is critical to design the communication strategy so that each stakeholder knows the mode and content of the communication and the owner, receiver, communication milestones, and decision gates. Furthermore, communication must be concise, accurate, and to the point.
6. Risk and Issue Management
Projects and programs are riddled with hazards and difficulties due to their uncertainty and unpredictability. It is challenging to forecast what will happen. Still, it is vital since a lack of preparation will throw the project team well behind schedule. Any project or program must begin with an agreement on identifying, categorizing, and prioritizing risks and concerns. How the danger or issue is handled is far more significant than the issue itself.
7. Assurance
Project assurance ensures that risks and concerns are addressed effectively and provides the indicators that provide delivery confidence. One of the most important aspects of assurance is developing metrics to provide a view of project success.
8. Project Management Control Process
It is the simplest component yet the most complicated to implement. Process control activities, metrics relevant to the project, and measurements are monitored and controlled. Also, this is a collaborative review; the management must monitor performance regularly and address any variances on time.
Creating project governance is more complex than it sounds. First, a significant investment is required when embarking on a new project. What’s more challenging is determining what advantages are linked with it. The following are four major advantages of project governance:
- Single point of contact
- Problem management and resolution
- Information dissemination and clear communication
- Outlines the roles, connections, and responsibilities of project stakeholders
Reinvent the PMO’s role in the digital age
The structure, provenance, and stakeholders of IT strategy, regulation, and management operations are changing dramatically due to digitization. As a result, the project management office, or PMO, must move its focus from project governance and delivery to digital transformation. According to a Gartner study, 87% of firms prioritize digitalization. Furthermore, today, 77% of an executive’s top priorities depend on technology.
As a result, PMOs are under enormous pressure to transform. But unfortunately, the project, program, and portfolio management processes they build and monitor are geared toward predictability and consistency rather than the speed and flexibility necessary to satisfy digital demand.
More flexible job descriptions and growing ownership of project management activities by business partners and other delivery professionals put traditional hierarchies and established PMO positions to the challenge. As a result, the PMO’s future role in digitization initiatives is established rather than for it since it usually needs to be considered in discussions about digitally driven changes to the IT operating model.
The traditional role of the PMO: Three advantages
Organizations are altering the function of the PMO in response to better support the enterprise’s digital aspirations. To accomplish so, they must examine possible activities critically through the prism of the PMO’s comparative advantages. The majority of PMOs have three main benefits, which are either inherent because of the PMO’s function or location or were developed as a result of experience:
1. A neutral enterprise perspective:
As capital allocation and portfolio priority approaches alter to give the financial flexibility necessary for digital work, the PMO’s objective, enterprise-wide perspective on demand, investment, and resource consumption, is more valuable.
2. The ability to operate via influence:
As organizational boundaries grow more flexible and who “owns” project management becomes less definite, influencing and empowering others, rather than direct ownership, becomes even more crucial.
3. Stakeholder insight:
As digitalization expands throughout the business and accounts for an increasing quantity of work, the number of first-time stakeholders and stakeholder complexity for each work item increases. Therefore, understanding the preferences of these many stakeholders and experiencing synthesizing their feedback becomes critical in producing results from digital work.
The PMO’s new role: Advancing digital ambitions
Leading PMOs are leveraging these advantages to shift the focus of their mission away from governance and delivery activities, embracing a strategy-over-governance and management-over-operations stance. Here are three approaches to altering the PMO’s role in the digital age:
![Altering the PMOs role in the Digital age](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/6.png)
Altering the PMOs role in the Digital age
1. Orchestrating delivery and team workflows
The PMO is well-suited to develop and promote interactions across increasingly different types of work and stakeholders due to its enterprise perspective and stakeholder insight. PMOs can play significant roles in driving the adoption of new delivery practices (e.g., Agile, DevOps) and will need to build systems for team collaboration across methodologies. This move entails identifying and managing interdependencies that might derail existing activity and lowering the effort necessary for interaction across teams, other governance roles, and third parties.
2. Developing and enabling digital talent
PMOs have expanded their roles in creating and fostering digital talent, adjusting career paths, and equipping project management professionals with the skills and techniques required to handle increasingly dynamic digital work. This initiative includes fostering new competencies such as product ownership, cultivating an enlarged network of project management practitioners, and providing targeted assistance for increasing business-managed projects.
3. Supporting digital transformation
Digitization is driving change in the IT operating model, with 52% of IT businesses utilizing or planning to use a new model centered on product lines. The PMO’s role in facilitating this transformation will be essential in the future. For example, the PMO may assist with enterprise-level capital allocation, design, and management of product line investment roadmaps, assess product line success, and manage the organizational transformation required when IT transitions to product lines. Aside from IT, the PMO will be asked to help implement digital business activities.
Final Thoughts
The future PMO will be more strategic and intricate than traditional approaches, emphasizing driving decision-making, execution, and outcomes while becoming more decentralized to interact with each workstream to achieve one common goal efficiently. Finally, PMOs will be more crucial than ever in addressing the challenges that organizations are now confronting. An effective transformation will need PMOs to act as the organization’s voice and face.
As the pace of digitalization increases, the PMO role will be put under increased pressure. As a result, PMOs are looking for methods to cut back on their time and effort on operational and governance tasks. Thus, PMO leaders must leverage their unique assets to change their focus from governance and delivery assistance to strategy and management activities that support digital projects.
Feel free to check out my discussion on this topic with Justin Buckwalter in YouTube
For any questions related to your Project Management career, training, and certifications, you can book an obligation free 15 minutes session with me by visiting https://bit.ly/2SbhTOK
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by Dharam CW2 | Aug 11, 2023 | General
A project manager or leader is much more than someone who develops a strategy and controls all operations within a project. These experts, for example, must be skilled in communication and connection-building because the work requires them to do it frequently. The capacity to develop long-term, trusted relationships with stakeholders is a critical component of project managers’ and leaders’ success. Whether they like it or not, diverse stakeholders directly impact the business. As a result, companies with managers who can foster a deep connection with their stakeholders have a substantial competitive edge in today’s interconnected business environment.
![Stakeholders](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/1.png)
Stakeholders
Why Stakeholders are Important to a Project
A stakeholder is an individual, group, or organization whose interests are affected by the success of a business venture or project. As the name suggests, stakeholders are interested in a project’s success. They might be internal or external to the entity funding the initiative. Stakeholder relationships may positively or negatively impact the project’s life cycle. Therefore you’ll need to identify your key stakeholders and develop a stakeholder management plan to fulfill the requirements.
Every project you manage has stakeholders, whether internal or external. One of the most common reasons for project failure is that the deliverables differ from what the customer requested or did not meet the customer’s demands. To guarantee project success, one should be familiar with the project’s main stakeholders, how they communicate their needs, and what acceptable results are.
Engaging stakeholders throughout the project, especially at the start, will assist, reduce and discover hazards and boost overall “buy-in.” When stakeholders are fully engaged, their impact is amplified. Stakeholders are vital to a project in the following ways.
![Importance Of Stakeholders In Project](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2-1.png)
Importance Of Stakeholders In Project
- Providing Expertise
Stakeholders are a source of information about current processes, historical data, and industry expertise. When gathering and documenting requirements, it is critical to include all essential stakeholders. Project managers and those in charge of deliverables may be experts on only a few projects. Key stakeholders can contribute to industry-specific needs or limitations that can be useful in identifying project constraints and risks.
- Reducing and Uncovering Risk
The more one engages and involves stakeholders in the project, the more they will decrease and identify risks. For example, during discussions, stakeholders may raise concerns regarding satisfying original specifications, project demands, and limits. Identifying risks and developing a plan to manage them before issues arise will significantly improve your initiatives’ success.
- Increasing Project Success
Stakeholders should be aware of the project scope, significant milestones, and when they will be asked to evaluate deliverables before final acceptance. Set expectations early in the project life cycle if the business must satisfy stakeholders’ demands due to competing needs or priorities. This move will assist in maintaining the relationship throughout the process.
- Granting Project Acceptance
The more frequently you interact and include stakeholders from the beginning, the more likely you will have a successful project outcome. By the end of the project, team members should be aware of delivery expectations and risks and how to reduce those risks. The final acceptance is their last stamp of approval at the project completion phase.
Stakeholder Relationships are key
Building relationships with stakeholders leads to improved trust. People collaborate more readily and successfully when there is trust. Investing time and effort in discovering and cultivating stakeholder connections may boost project confidence, reduce uncertainty, and accelerate issue resolution and decision-making. This concept recommends making a deliberate decision to devote time, attention, and effort to stakeholder relationships. In addition, personal qualities such as self-awareness, mindfulness, respect for others, and courage may be essential to developing trustworthy, open, and honest relationships.
![Ways To Approach Stakeholder Relationships](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/3.png)
Ways To Approach Stakeholder Relationships
How could we approach it?
- Determine the stakeholder hierarchy.
- Create profiles for individual and group stakeholders.
- Create relationship maps.
- Determine who should interact with whom and when.
- Always maintain a professional and genuine demeanor.
- Build trust and confidence through controlling and satisfying expectations, acting with integrity, honoring commitments, and being trustworthy.
- Consider how you can assist your stakeholders rather than just how they can assist your project.
Risks of overlooking this concept include:
![Risks Of Overlooking Into Stakeholders Relationship Concept](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/4.png)
Risks Of Overlooking Into Stakeholders Relationship Concept
- Increased project risk in terms of time, cost, and quality.
- Greater known and unknown project opposition.
- Project management is shattered.
- Reduced team motivation.
- Low cohesiveness within the project community.
- Personal and corporate reputational damage, as well as recrimination.
The benefits of applying this concept include the following:
![Benefits Of Building Stakeholder Relationship](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5.png)
Benefits Of Building Stakeholder Relationship
- Mutual trust and confidence have grown.
- Stress reduction and a more pleasant working atmosphere.
- Improved problem-solving and decision-making.
- Increased bid value and increased possibilities of keeping clients and employees.
- Opportunities for personal development, maturity, and career progress.
- Sufficiently prepared to deal with challenging circumstances.
- Legacy to carry on with future endeavors.
Ways to build good relationships with Project Stakeholders
Stakeholders must be effectively taken care of for any firm to succeed. These include the customers, suppliers, partners, investors, workers, and the general public interested in your company. When a stakeholder is neglected, the organization can feel the consequences. Building great connections with stakeholders requires work, time, and a well-thought-out action plan.
Building trusted relationships with key stakeholders and maintaining communication throughout your project is essential. Through active engagement and speedy resolution, engaged stakeholders motivate individuals and keep the project on track.
Project managers establish trust and interact with important stakeholders at the outset. However, as the project progresses and the team size rises, we need to catch up on the importance of maintaining those connections. If unengaged, it usually results in communication failures, a mismatch of expectations, delayed decision-making, and, in extreme cases, misaligned project goals with company strategic objectives.
Here are six suggestions for developing and maintaining effective stakeholder relationships.
![Ways To Build Good Relationships With Project Stakeholders](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Blog_DS_Page-6.png)
Ways To Build Good Relationships With Project Stakeholders
- Identify the key stakeholders.
In every project or program, the project manager oversees the initiative and identifies all stakeholders involved in planning, status reporting, or managing the dependencies. However, the focus here is on how you engage your important stakeholders. Who are the most important stakeholders? It is determined by project type, organizational structure, industry, and internal and external relationships.
Key stakeholders in project engagement are:
- Persons who have decision-making authority.
- Influence.
- A vested interest in the project’s result.
They might be part of your project’s organizational structure (such as a project sponsor or business sponsor) or an extended stakeholder (like external customers or funding partners).
Identifying these important stakeholders early in the project allows the PM and team to build trusted relationships and understand their expectations of project deliverables, their role, and their level of engagement on an ongoing basis.
- Analyze the individual stakeholders
Analyze the individual stakeholders identified at the previous stage to determine the amount of involvement and time required to create the connection. Historical data, team brainstorming sessions, focus groups, and interviews might provide the necessary knowledge for analysis. Next, each important stakeholder is examined to determine their attitude toward the initiative, level of support, influence, and acceptance of the change.
The project manager would decide on the amount of engagement based on their interest in the project and their ability to affect change. When there is more ambiguity about the program’s scope, objectives, and expected outcome, the PM’s role in managing expectations and relationships is more significant.
- Plan on how to keep your stakeholders engaged in your project
Consider organizational culture and attitudes toward the project while developing an engagement plan. For example, understand the stakeholder’s level of support or resistance to team talks.
Define how you will assess when a stakeholder becomes disengaged as part of your strategy; the metric may be anything like the number of mandatory meetings missed by the stakeholder in a month. When a significant stakeholder consistently skips a needed meeting or fails to make timely decisions, it is a source of contention. If not handled, this disengagement will begin to undermine the project.
- Keep all key stakeholders informed and updated
The project manager is responsible for keeping all key stakeholders informed and updated as frequently and as early as feasible during the project. Therefore, maintain a proactive approach in your discussions with them.
To build a standardized onboarding process, new stakeholders should become acquainted with a collection of standard artifacts (like the charter, communication plan, business case, and risk register). Also, take the chance to hear from current stakeholders. Feedback from stakeholders who no longer have a vested interest in your endeavor may help you adjust your path.
- Maintain involvement
It is critical to maintain your involvement, especially in long-term initiatives. At the end of a project, we’ve seen project teams wear out, with stakeholders eager to move on to the next big thing. The project manager must keep the engagement going. The connections and reputation you build via this involvement can help you succeed in future efforts in large businesses. Maintain contact with your key stakeholders long after the project has been completed and delivered.
Project Management Trends That Will Shape the Future
Project management is crucial in deciding how businesses and organizations will fare in the marketplace. Projects might include implementing a corporate plan, running marketing efforts, or organizing business events. Teams work to interact, manage, and communicate as effectively as possible to complete tasks and meet deadlines.
Organizations flexibly responded to the pandemic’s disruption by developing new methods of operation. However, they were thrust into the era of digitization and had to reconsider their methods of operation. These top 6 project management trends in the future demonstrate the ongoing need for technical innovation and digital transformation regarding the function of project management software in the future by building great stakeholder relationships.
![Future Project Management Trends](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7.png)
Future Project Management Trends
- AI Automation and Implementation
The use and usage of artificial intelligence are the most obvious of the new current trends in project management. Knowing which initiatives are more successful enables teams to precisely determine which aspects are vital if the firm is to reduce costs and risks. As a result, organizations may increase transparency and productivity. The main factor driving the current increase in the adoption of such software is this characteristic of project management systems.
Let’s look at a few instances:
- A few businesses currently use automated and machine learning technologies to get alerts about potential issues the company could run into. For instance, suppliers might now get notifications about possible obstacles like bad weather and traffic.
- Building machine learning algorithms to support a project manager’s decision-making capabilities by evaluating data from several projects in the project portfolio is a promising study area.
- Globalized Project Management
As working circumstances got more flexible due to the forced work from home caused by the worldwide pandemic, businesses and teams became even more globalized. It has long since established roots. Mercer estimates that 70% of businesses want to use the hybrid work model.
Although the remote work and hybrid model trend allows for the employment of creative and inventive individuals worldwide, project management has to keep up with it. Collaboration, for example, is challenging when team members are unavailable due to competing schedules created by different time zones.
Software for project management provides a tool that could address this issue. The platform enables all brainstorming sessions and discussions to take place in a single setting, allowing businesses to access talent worldwide.
- Hybrid Project Management
The third new development in project management is the rising use of the hybrid approach, which refers to how project teams combine the Waterfall methodology, the systematic approach, with the Agile methodology, which is the quick-moving methodology. A hybrid approach aims to elevate teams to become aware of the specific project lifecycle while providing the ability to support them in changing the plan as necessary.
How do you know what will work for you, and how can you prepare for this trend?
PMs must learn about the most recent techniques, examine some of the fundamentals, and analyze how to use them correctly to obtain a greater understanding of the project situation and its aspects, such as the clients, the corporate objectives, and the purpose of the project, and the team’s attitude.
There is an increasing requirement to adapt your strategy and develop a project plan that enables you to lead projects unconventionally and comprehend different components of multiple techniques that cater to the demands of your team, perceived timeline, environment, end goals, etc.
- Stakeholder-Centered design
The fourth most recent trend in project management is an emphasis on delivering transparency for the benefit of the company’s stakeholders and developing products centered on the human perspective. Project managers may communicate with, collaborate with, and inform stakeholders. This design makes it easy for investors and customers to support any project launched as part of a company’s business plan.
- Soft Skills
Soft skills have become an essential component of project management. Project managers must interact with stakeholders, clients, and project teams. They will mitigate risks, resolve internal disagreements, and keep the project team engaged. Having a high level of emotional intelligence will also be useful in project management. Therefore, organizations should begin investing in tools and programs that assist employees in acquiring soft skills.
- Predictive Data and Simulation-Based Analyses
The most difficult and demotivating aspect of managing several projects is when unanticipated repercussions jeopardize their success. Project managers seek a solution to give them the knowledge to account for the unexpected. Project teams with predictive and data analytics skills may fully use KPIs and benchmarks and execute them proactively by developing data-backed best practices.
Companies cannot afford to bear the repercussions of project failure, given the competitive environments of most markets. Therefore, projects must be started successfully to stand out from the competition. The most recent advancements in project management software demonstrate that technology will play a role in this element of corporate operations in the future. Suppose you want projects to succeed and businesses to thrive. In that case, you should consider introducing project management solutions to simplify your, your teams, and your stakeholders’ lives.
Final Thoughts
Stakeholder involvement will become essential to optimize success as knowing stakeholders becomes increasingly critical for firms. For example, stakeholder engagement may assess reactions, track public impressions of a company’s operations, and assure collaboration and partnership with all stakeholders. In addition, an organization’s long-term performance may be determined by its connections with stakeholders, which provide commitment and buy-in to future initiatives and difficulties. As a result, the company becomes more aware and responsive to the demands of all its users and stakeholders.
Stakeholder management must place a greater emphasis on involvement to move projects from installation to execution. Stakeholder management must be less hierarchically centered while considering companies’ changing political nature. Projects should begin by identifying diverse stakeholders, engaging with them consistently, and coordinating continuously to increase project success.
As a project proceeds, Stakeholder management processes need to account for the dynamic nature of stakeholders’ commitment to a project and the interactions between various stakeholders. As a result, project teams will get the competitive advantage they want by focusing not just on their stakeholder position but also on the other major stakeholders in a project and how they interact. To achieve more effective stakeholder involvement, follow these three steps:
- Create a stakeholder map and keep it updated as the project progresses.
- Prioritize essential stakeholders and regularly evaluate assumptions about commitment levels and impact.
- Create essential stakeholders and increase their commitment to the change.
Feel free to check out my discussion on this topic with Justin Buckwalter in YouTube
For any questions related to your Project Management career, training, and certifications, you can book an obligation free 15 minutes session with me by visiting talktodharam.com
You can subscribe to the vCare Project Management YouTube Channel to catch future videos of our Q&A series and certification success stories: https://bit.ly/2YF0wJl
You can subscribe to and follow my podcasts and interviews with Project Management Experts on YouTube at https://bit.ly/2NDY8wd
by Dharam CW2 | Jul 24, 2023 | General
Delivering a successful project is challenging, especially when there are multiple stakeholders. However, even if a project is performed on time, on budget, and to the expected scope, it can still be regarded as a success only if the stakeholder expectations are managed appropriately.
Each project stakeholder has certain expectations. Project managers are at the forefront of potentially disastrous situations when such expectations conflict. They must address and resolve the issue or risk jeopardizing the project and their position. Because the fundamental cause of problems is only sometimes apparent, project leaders and teams must analyze links between issues and stakeholder motives using interpersonal skills such as resolving conflict, resistance to change, and trust building.
![Project Stakeholders](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1-3.png)
Project Stakeholders
Project Stakeholders
A stakeholder is an individual, group, or organization that is affected by the result of a business venture or project.
Stakeholder interactions may positively or negatively impact the project’s life cycle. Thus, a project leader must identify important stakeholders and develop a stakeholder management plan to satisfy their demands. Using project management tools and strategies to keep track of the key stakeholders is an excellent method to remain on top of things and ensure that project stakeholders remain satisfied and productive.
![Types of Stakeholders](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2-2.png)
Types of Stakeholders
Internal Stakeholders
An internal stakeholder is somebody whose interest in the project is directly linked to their affiliation with the entity in charge. Internal stakeholders want the strategic and commercial goals of the project to be realized. They might be project managers, team members, sponsors, owners, or investors.
External Stakeholders
External stakeholders are not directly linked with the company but are important to the business or are influenced by the project in some way. Those are frequently supply chain participants, creditors, or public groups.
Stakeholder Management
The stakeholder management process includes communicating project status, expenses, and barriers to stakeholders to increase visibility, navigate changes in project direction, and manage expectations. Project stakeholders are those involved in the project or whose interests may be influenced by the project’s execution or completion.
Stakeholder management helps project managers keep change at the forefront of their thoughts while making it less intimidating. Furthermore, the stakeholder management plan is a reminder for every interaction the project managers have with direct or indirect stakeholders, helping them maintain a genuine link between the project and day-to-day operations.
Closing the Stakeholder Expectation Gap – Means
An effective stakeholder management process ensures that timely and relevant feedback is provided, and that the stakeholder management strategy directs the change effort. The project manager maintains stakeholder expectations, resolves conflicts, and identifies and fixes any problems that develop throughout the project. In general, the following are the fundamental parts form the stakeholder management process:
![The Necessary Elements For Successful Stakeholder Management](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/3-1.png)
The Necessary Elements For Successful Stakeholder Management
- Managing stakeholder expectations: The project is more likely to succeed when stakeholders’ expectations are actively managed. As a result, to ensure perfect conformance with project goals and expectations and to continue the project management effort, the project manager must continually negotiate and influence the demands of stakeholders.
- Managing stakeholder perception: It is critical for project success to ensure that stakeholders are involved in the project regularly and are kept up to date on the project’s progress. High-level stakeholder perception increases the likelihood that stakeholders will provide the necessary support and the project will be completed as intended.
- Keeping track of stakeholder activity: The project manager is primarily responsible for recording and tracking all stakeholders’ activity. As a result, to secure stakeholder acceptance and project communications plan adherence, the project manager should formally document all contacts with stakeholders and keep records of the project’s outcomes.
- Solving problems and resolving conflicts: To avoid challenges and conflicts, the project manager should address stakeholders’ concerns and identify risks and threats in collaboration with conflict management. By referring to change requests, the project manager can generate solutions.
Understanding the components of the managing stakeholder’s process enables the project manager to engage with stakeholder expectations and demands and build action plans to be used when disputes and challenges emerge. The project manager can utilize the following tools to assess conflicts and challenges, as well as manage stakeholders on an individual and group level:
![Tools To Assess Conflicts And Challenges In Managing Stakeholder's Process](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/4-2.png)
Tools To Assess Conflicts And Challenges In Managing Stakeholder’s Process
- Issue logs: An issue log is a tool for assessing issues and documenting resolutions. It is a document with a rigid categories structure that allows each issue to be placed in the appropriate category (issue group). The project manager uses problem logs to ensure that each stakeholder understands the project and maintains positive working interactions among all stakeholders, including project team members.
- Change Logs: It is a tool for documenting any changes that occur throughout a project. The project manager uses change logs to track changes and their impact on project goals and deliverables. A change log should be provided to project stakeholders and should include data on changes to risks, uncertainties, costs, and budgets.
A change request for project deliverables may result from the technique for managing and engaging stakeholders. Changes to the stakeholder management approach and registry are also feasible. The method of managing stakeholders allows for evaluating and modifying stakeholder benefits created earlier in the project’s life cycle.
Five pitfalls to address while dealing with the expectations of stakeholders
![5 Pitfalls To Address While Dealing With The Expectations Of Stakeholders](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/5-2.png)
5 Pitfalls To Address While Dealing With The Expectations Of Stakeholders
- Identify the stakeholders
A project often involves many stakeholders, and it can take time to identify all of them. A stakeholder is a person, a group, an organization, or a set of organizations that are actively involved in or may be affected by the project. Stakeholders can have an impact on a project in a variety of ways.
For example, if a stakeholder is top management in an organization and is not completely committed to a project, it may drastically limit buy-in throughout the business. Founders and C-suites are also stakeholders who can positively or negatively impact a project. Therefore, the identification of stakeholders is a critical step in managing expectations.
- Classifying stakeholders
Effective stakeholder management necessitates a project manager categorizing stakeholders based on their role in project completion. A project manager must determine which stakeholders are supporters and which may be obstacles to the project. It might be challenging to define the types of risks, where and when each risk exists, the impact on the project, or how to build strategies to handle possible risks if stakeholders cannot be classified.
- Mapping expectations
Project managers must resolve possible concerns, keep stakeholders involved and motivated, and finish the project on time. A project manager must have a good understanding of all stakeholders’ expectations. Stakeholder analysis and adequate documentation can be useful in mapping expectations. Stakeholders may have different priorities when completing tasks, milestones, or the full project. Their interests may be interpreted differently and have different definitions of success.
For example, one stakeholder may prioritize project completion on time, while another defines success as keeping it under budget. Mapping expectations and obtaining clarity among all stakeholders enhances the possibility that a project manager and their team can effectively complete a project.
- Using appropriate communication methods
Stakeholder management requires determining and implementing appropriate communication methods. To successfully manage stakeholder expectations, a project manager must establish the available and preferred communication mechanisms for stakeholders. A poor or incorrect communication approach can lead to distrust and dissatisfaction between stakeholders and a project manager. It is also essential to adjust communication tactics and frequency based on elements such as time, message, purpose, secrecy, or changes based on stakeholder contexts.
- Engaging stakeholders
Stakeholder engagement during the project with frequent updates boosts stakeholder confidence, which is essential for project success. In addition, efficient stakeholder management necessitates the involvement of stakeholders in decision-making by the project manager.
Although a project manager may believe they have already determined the optimal course of action, they should incorporate stakeholders in procedures and pertinent talks to ensure all options have been examined; otherwise, key possibilities and expectations may be missed.
Closing the Stakeholder Expectation Gap – Methods
Before beginning a new project, start by identifying all stakeholders. First, identify those impacted by the project and the organizations that will influence the project. Then, using the strategy outlined below, begin developing strong relationships with each stakeholder.
![Closing the Stakeholder Expectation Gap – Methods](https://dharamsingh.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/6.png)
Closing the Stakeholder Expectation Gap – Methods
- Analyze stakeholders
Conduct a stakeholder analysis or an evaluation of the key participants in a project and how the initiative will affect their issues and requirements. Determine their unique qualities and interests. Find out what motivates them and what frustrates them. Define responsibilities and levels of engagement, and assess whether there are any disputes among stakeholders.
- Assess the influence
Determine the extent to which stakeholders can have an impact on the project. The more powerful a stakeholder is, the more a project manager will require assistance. When evaluating stakeholders, consider the question, “What’s in it for them?” Knowing what each stakeholder needs or desires from the project allows the project manager to measure their degree of support. Remember to weigh support against influence, like Is it more necessary to have strong support from a low-level stakeholder or moderate support from a high-level stakeholder?
- Understand their expectations
Determine the exact expectations of stakeholders. Then, when necessary, seek clarification to ensure they are thoroughly understood.
- Define “success”
Every stakeholder may have a distinct definition of project success. Discovering this towards the end of the project is a potential disaster. Instead, gather definitions and integrate them into the objectives to guarantee that all stakeholders support the final results.
- Keep stakeholders involved
- Don’t just provide updates to stakeholders.
- Solicit their opinions.
- Schedule time for brief meetings to get to know them better.
- Determine each stakeholder’s ability to engage while keeping time restrictions in mind.
- Keep stakeholders informed
- Send regular status updates.
- One update each week is generally adequate.
- Hold project meetings as appropriate, but allow enough time between them.
- Respond to stakeholders’ inquiries and emails as soon as possible.
- Regular contact is usually valued – and may help ease the impact when you have unpleasant news to deliver.
These are some of the fundamentals of developing effective stakeholder connections. However, like with any relationship, there are subtleties that every effective project manager knows, such as understanding the distinctions and responding successfully to various types of stakeholders.
Final Thoughts
There is a link between resolving conflicts in stakeholder expectations and project success. Similarly, the faster project teams defuse a potentially dangerous situation by recognizing the source of conflicts, the link between issues, and the motivations of stakeholders, the simpler it is to develop trust, settle conflicts, and overcome resistance to change.
Using diverse modes of communication between the project team, senior management, and stakeholders improves prospects for mutual understanding. These methods may help the project managers to meet the stakeholder expectations and reduce the risk of project disaster.
Feel free to check out my discussion on this topic with Thomas Walenta in YouTube
For any questions related to your Project Management career, training, and certifications, you can book an obligation free 15 minutes session with me by visiting talktodharam.com
You can subscribe to the vCare Project Management YouTube Channel to catch future videos of our Q&A series and certification success stories: https://bit.ly/2YF0wJl
You can subscribe to and follow my podcasts and interviews with Project Management Experts on YouTube at https://bit.ly/2NDY8wd
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