Project Stakeholders and their roles

 Stakeholders are individuals or organizations who participate in the project or are impacted by its result.
 Some stakeholders are “active” or “key”.
 Five Primary Stakeholders:
1- Project Manager
2- Project Team
3- Functional Management
4- Sponsor
5- Customer
 The heart of successful project management involves satisfying the expectations of these stakeholders.
 “Satisfy Stakeholders!”
 The first step in this process is gaining agreement of all the stakeholders on the goals of the project.

Stakeholder Roles: Project Manager:
 Project manager is involved in magic, or, more precisely, practical magic.
 The project manager must ask questions like this: “What is my authority?” “Who do I report to?” “What are my expectations?”
 If you are a project manager, you are an important stakeholder, too. Don’t forget to satisfy yourself!

Stakeholder Roles: Project Team:
 All groups and individuals who contribute time, skills, and efforts to the project are considered team members.
 In addition to the people from the company assigned to the project, these can be contractors, and even customers.

Stakeholder Roles: Functional Management:
 Management refers to functional management, also known as line management.
 These can be department managers, or first-level supervisors.
 Functional managers are responsible for an organizational unit, such as “engineering” or “marketing” rather than for a specific project.
 These are the people with long-term control over employees and other resources in the firm.
 Project managers describe help from functional managers in “getting the right people at the right time” and “timely decisions based on the facts presented by the project team.”

Stakeholder Roles: Sponsor:
 The sponsor is the person with formal authority who is ultimately responsible for the project.
 A sponsor may be a senior executive or a junior manager.
 The sponsor provides the authority that the project manager often lacks.
 Why are Sponsors Important?
 First, sponsors are ultimately responsible for the success of the project. The formal authority that comes from their title and position in the organization endows them with the responsibility.
 Why are Sponsors Important?
 Second, the sponsor’s primary task is to help the project team be successful. The best sponsors know they aren’t sponsoring a project; they are sponsoring the project manager and the project team.

Stakeholder Roles: Customer:
 Somebody will be paying for the project.
 Note: in public sector projects, customer group is composed of all the citizens who will use the road, or other service built by the project.