Managing Stakeholder Expectations

This desk reference: Discusses the importance of setting ground rules in building a foundation for project success, and outlines concepts for defining success criteria and tying them to project constraints Proposes ways to decipher organizational politics and techniques for improving vertical collaboration through relationship-building and understanding each other's needs to the benefit of a project Provides checklists and measures to determine how prepared an organization is for undertaking a project and addresses questions and observation points to quantify project complexity, so as to better prepare decision makers Presents questions, checklists and tips of things to look for when analyzing stakeholders that will draw a clearer picture of how to manage their expectations, what to expect from them, how to treat them, and how to design a communication plan applicable, relevant, effective and efficient to address all stakeholders' needs Describes ways to determine project health through multiple measures that check a project's interim performance beyond traditional ways of measuring deliverables and results Reviews techniques to reduce the number of requirement and scope changes introduced throughout a project and offers a simple process that enables the proper measure of change impact and associated risks, including the overall impact taking into consideration all other changes in the pipeline Explains how to prioritize risks based on organizational and project priorities for better alignment with objectives, and how to break down the process of risk response into all of its components to align them with the project success criteria Illustrates the link between effective management of quality, risk, communication and change, and delivering success on the traditional measures of scope, time and cost, and the project's intended benefits to the organization Introduces a framework of what integration really means and how to perform it properly