3 Types of Stakeholders Important to Project Management Success

The purpose of this article is to cover the different types of stakeholders that are important for your project’s success.  Stakeholders are under the LEAD part and under People in the Project Management MPM model.

Stakeholders are under the LEAD part and under People

Different Types of Stakeholders are Part of Your Project’s Success

Stakeholders are very important to the success of your project, especially Key Stakeholders.  If you support them, meaning make sure you keep them informed and aware, they will always have your back, especially when others are questioning the validity of your project.  

So, it is critical to understand how to work with them, how to keep them engaged and how they can help you.

Stakeholders are Important to the Success of Your Project

Stakeholders can be very formal, including having a stakeholder register.  That usually does not occur with smaller projects.

Stakeholders can be external groups who have a vested interest in your project’s outcomes.  

They can be on the receiving end of the project deliverables such as regulatory bodies or special interest groups and can block the project outcomes if they don’t fit within certain criteria.  In that case a formal register and a formal method of communication and receiving feedback and approval.  Stakeholders such as this are usually not the case with smaller projects, so these types of stakeholders are not covered here.

We are assuming you have “friendly” stakeholders who, as long as you keep them informed, have your back and are interested in ensuring your project succeeds no matter what path it takes.

Include a Range of Stakeholders

Previous articles and the INITIATE main article that brought stakeholders in as a component for the charter, did not differentiate between types of stakeholders.

Check out these other articles if you want a refresher on the components of the charter, or why do it in the first place.

Stakeholders can be external to you and your team, and they can be internal to your management area of responsibility and part of your project team.

In 40+ projects I have found it is easiest to keep the definitions simple.  It may be simplest for you to divide them into three kinds of stakeholders: Internal, External, and Key.

Internal Stakeholder 

• Think of internal stakeholders as project team members.  These are people who have daily responsibilities on the project.  They can also be affected by the outcomes of the project.   
• They do have a stake in the outcome of the project because they are on the team, so they are technically stakeholders.
• They can report to you, or report to other managers in the organization, but they spend a portion of their time devoting their specialized skill set to helping your project because of an agreed upon arrangement between managers and executive.  
• You can call team members that either report to you or to other managers in your organization as “Internal Stakeholders” because they are within the same organization you work for.
• And as the project progresses, you probably won’t refer to them as stakeholders, but as project team members.

Stakeholder / External Stakeholder

• There isn’t a nice clean terminology to differentiate between kinds of stakeholders, it is sort of grey.  
• In other words, you don’t usually call anyone external to your organization as an external stakeholder.  You just refer to them as stakeholders.  Also as mentioned above you don’t usually refer to your project team as stakeholders, even though they are.  

External stakeholders are managers, executive who are affected by the project outcomes

• External stakeholders are not project team members, and they are different than key stakeholders because the key ones are on your steering committee.
• As the project progresses, you can think of external stakeholders as managers or executive who are affected by the project outcomes.  
• They can be business leaders whose teams are heavily affected by what your project team is creating. Heavily affected also means that if you don’t get the adoption of your solution right, then their teams are heavily negatively affected, which is not good. 
• They could be in the stakeholder role because they were assigned by the executive to keep an eye on you and the project. This gives the executive an independent view to balance what is published in your project status reports.
• They could be from the finance team because of the project’s capital or operational expenditures or due to financial complexities, someone with a financial background needs to be observing.
• External stakeholders can be government agencies or regulatory bodies.  They could be suppliers or external customers.  In other words, an external stakeholder can be anyone who has a responsibility to be interested in the outcomes of the project.

Key Stakeholder

• You can think of a key stakeholder as someone who is going to be actively involved in the project.  
• Often stakeholders are passive. They receive the monthly report, attend whatever meetings they are asked to attend but don’t get too involved.

Key stakeholders support you and your project

• Key stakeholders, however, are those who have more time allocated to help the project.  This set of Key Stakeholders is golden, and you need them.  Keep them informed appraised, and not surprised, and they will have your back.
• This is the group that supports you and your project if there are any whisper-down-the-lane conversations in hallways or meeting rooms about the integrity of your project.  You want them to “have your back”.  
• You need this team, and though it can seem like extra effort to engage them, their perspective and input is a vital sounding board to the success of your project.

Summary

Stakeholders are very critical to the success of your project, and it is important to understand the different types and the roles they play.  

Ensure you have the right mix of stakeholders and you understand the different types.

Align with your stakeholders to increase the probability of your project’s success.

Action Steps / Apply This Knowledge

1. Look through your list of stakeholders and divide them into the different types.
2. Make sure you have a balance and add additional ones if more are needed.
3. Keep in mind that your key stakeholders are going to be working with you closely throughout the duration of the project so that needs to be a good working relationship.

Learn More

In an upcoming workshop, for which you can subscribe to be notified when it’s available, we cover project management examples in detail.  

Also, in the workshop, we go into greater depth on many of the project management items in the Project Management MPM model.  As well you can ask questions about any of your current projects during the Q&A. 

LEAD – Types of Stakeholders 

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