Key stakeholders' requirements and interests

Different stakeholders have different interests and different requirements. For example, your customer might want certain features or functions in the result, but the sponsor may want to make sure that you're keeping to the budget. Sometimes not everybody gets what they want. If you're diligent in collecting requirements and are transparent in your communication and reporting, you will be able to engage your stakeholders and work with them effectively to determine project requirements and decide what can and can't be done.

The title of stakeholder is really just a label for anybody involved in the project life cycle and who may be interested in the result once the project ends. There are often a variety of priorities, needs, and requirements from stakeholder to stakeholder, and it will be important to reach a consensus prior to the actual execution of project work.

I mentioned in the exam tip that stakeholders are involved in the project life cycle and have needs and requirements during the life of the project. But what exactly is meant by the project life cycle versus the product life cycle?

If the definition of a project is temporary and unique, it stands to reason that when the project is over, the deliverable has a life cycle of its own. If I decide that I'm going to a big box electronics store to purchase a new computer monitor, I have the option of choosing from multiple types of monitors with a variety of features and functions. If I walk out with one of those monitors, I'm not a stakeholder—I'm a consumer. You might be thinking, Aren't you an end user? I am an end user but, in this case, I am not a stakeholder.

The reason I'm not a stakeholder is because I did not provide any requirements to the project team to create the monitor I was looking for. I simply walked in and bought it once it had been mass-produced. The monitor that I bought is currently in the product life cycle. Until that product is retired and upgraded to the latest and greatest, that product life cycle continues. Once that product is retired, the project life cycle for the upgrade begins.

Now let's look at this through the eyes of an actual stakeholder rather than a consumer. If I went to the organization that can build monitors and ask them to custom-build something just for me that included the size of the monitor I needed, the pixel specification of the monitor, in the price range that I was looking for, and so on, I would then be a stakeholder and an end user.

In reality, it would be very difficult for organizations to identify all of their consumer end users. Typically, when a project is being selected, an average end user will be kept in mind in order to produce the features and functions that the market is asking for. Consumer end users are there in spirit but are not part of the project.

At the beginning of a project, we have a high-level description of the scope of the work that explains why the organization determined the project is necessary. Your job is to clearly understand why the project is being undertaken, what problem the result will solve, and be able to communicate those variables clearly enough to help determine whether the project is realistic.

Just because a project is considered doesn't mean it is the best idea. Since you will be responsible for the success of the project or, in the worst scenario the project's failure, you will want to make sure you have all of the information you need to clearly communicate the high-level scope description. That will help you to evaluate the project request and begin determining who the stakeholders are that you will be collecting requirements from when the time comes. In the next chapter, Chapter 4, Developing a Project Charter, we will review the process of taking a project request through formal authorization, therefore we will be able to begin project work. At that point, there will already be stakeholders involved and those stakeholders will lead you to still others who will have a stake in the project and its result. Many of the categories of roles and responsibilities on projects can be found in the next section. Even if you don't have every single type of stakeholder on your current projects, in the future, you have many or all of them.