Stakeholder Engagement

A modern practical approach that gives people with a justifiable claim to be allowed to influence a project's requirements the opportunity to do so, i.e. the stakeholders. We put people, processes and technology together to ensure that needs are expressed, communicated and evaluated, and the industrious activities of many are held coherent, and momentum maintained towards the goal.

Bookshelves groan with texts that confidently recite the principles of stakeholder management. Each with a self-help toolkit presented in opaque process diagrams of many colours; processes that often crumble under the forces that emerge from the real world.  The principles are valid, but the execution is often superficial; however, we have developed a practical system that people actually use, because it is convenient, relevant to their view of the world, and they can gain benefit through it.

Who is a stakeholder?

Members of a project design and management team; the people who manage and use the systems created; those who regulate and police the relevant standards; those who are affected by the creation or use of the systems, etc. 

Why is stakeholder engagement important?

Many authoritative studies have shown that three quarters of projects take longer and cost more than they should; over half of joint ventures, often the means of delivery, fail; and there is frequently a significant gap between what was intended and actually delivered.  This sad tale stretches back over many years, and when researchers seek the reasons they commonly find that it was a failure to deal effectively with the stakeholders’ requirements at an early stage; a failure to identify and incorporate the emergent needs that appeared as a project moved though its life cycle; and ignorance of the interdependencies within and between projects.  We will help you avoid these pitfalls, and gain the many benefits from a stakeholder engagement programme that is connected to, and part of, the real world.

What is a requirement?

Typically there is a vague understanding of how to use requirements, and abuse is more common. They capture the needs of the stakeholders; defined by what the component, system or project must do, or the quality it must have, and they are the means by which these characteristics are communicated across the stakeholders. It is a statement, agreed across the relevant stakeholders, that captures a business or technical need. A need that is carried though the design, procurement, manufacture or construction, and is eventually fulfilled by the system that emerges into the real world at the end of the project, to satisfaction of the stakeholders.