PMI PMP Project Management Professional – Introducing Project Stakeholder Management

1. Section Overview: Project Stakeholder Management

Welcome to this section on project stakeholder management. This is chapter 13, the last real chapter in the Pinback guide on project stakeholder management. When we talk about stakeholder management, we’re talking about really engaging and managing the engagement. Not managing the people, but managing the engagement with our stakeholders. So that’s what we’re going to be discussing here in this section. Some key concepts. Identifying project stakeholders. One of the first activities that we do in our project, we are talking about it at the end of the course, but it’s one of our first activities that we’re going to take on early in the project. A stakeholder is any individual or group or entity that’s affected by your project, or they can affect it, influence your project.

So stakeholder management is a really important activity that starts way back in initiating when we identify stakeholders, and then it works its way throughout the project. So we always want to be on the lookout for stakeholders and worried about stakeholder engagement and keeping stakeholders engaged, performing stakeholder analysis and planning stakeholder management and then monitoring stakeholder engagement and setting some goals of current level, desired level of engagement. So something really important that we want to do as project managers.

So a lot of important information here about identifying and planning and keeping those stakeholders engaged. So let’s hop in and knock that out right now. You can tell I’m getting tired, too. All right, you’re doing great. Let’s both commit to finishing this course and to being successful and our target that you can do it. I have confidence. You’ve got the hard part here, though, is the learning. All right, let’s hop in and talk about introducing project stakeholder management.

2. Key Concepts for Stakeholder Management

Once we are in a project and we’ve identified stakeholders, we really begin to manage stakeholder engagement. We’re going to be interacting with those stakeholders. Once we create that stakeholder engagement plan, then we follow that plan to interact and engage stakeholders. So managing stakeholder engagement we do throughout the project. We want to obtain, confirm, maintain and promote commitment to the project. So we’re talking about current maintenance, but also changing those people that are negative or unaware about our project. We want them engaged and we want them committed to the project. So we manage stakeholder expectations. That’s important as well have a clear understanding of what we’re creating.

We have to do some negotiation and communication. So you think about requirements gathering that’s overlaps here with stakeholder engagement. So negotiate and obviously communicate. As there are concerns about our project or risk are introduced to our project or the outputs of a risk response happen. We want to anticipate that and communicate and engage stakeholders. And then any issues, especially when people are gossiping or talking outside the project, then we have to work to clarify those issues. And so often those are due to rumors or miscommunication. So we want to clarify and resolve issues, or if there’s some misunderstandings between the project and our stakeholders that we go to the problem, we can’t ignore it. Let’s look at the EDOs for managing Stakeholder engagement.

Some inputs here. You want to reference your PM plan, so the communications management plan, the risk management plan, stakeholder engagement plan and your change management plan, project documents, your change log, your issue log, lessons learned and stakeholder register. And of course EEF and OPA tools and techniques, expert judgment, communication skills. So we’re looking for feedback and offering feedback. We will rely on some interpersonal and team skills.

So conflict management, cultural awareness, again negotiation, observation and conversation, and having some political awareness. We know politics are going to happen, ground rules are needed and meetings are outputs. Here you may have change request updates to your PM plan, your communications management plan and Stakeholder engagement plan, and updates to project documents, your change log, your issue log, lessons learned, and your stakeholder register.

Because you may identify new stakeholders during this process and engagement strategies may change or interest may change or more information becomes available. So you update that stakeholder register. So how do you engage a stakeholder? The number one way is communication. People need information, but they need precise information at the right time and the right modality. So a blast out email may not always be the best way to communicate.

You have to think about, well, what does the stakeholder need? What are they interested in? What’s their concern? So you try to see their concern or the project from their perspective, from their point of view, and that helps you to better manage that engagement. If you understand what they’re concerned about, then you can better engage that stakeholder. You’ll need some interpersonal skills here. Conflict management. Sometimes stakeholders get emotional about your project or they get upset the project’s happening. So we need some emotional intelligence and some conflict management, some cultural awareness.

Think about a very large project and how it may span the globe and you’re dealing with different cultures and that can introduce some issues in the project. You may have to negotiate with stakeholders. So that means give and take and reaching a fair outcome as part of negotiation. Sometimes you just need to observe stakeholders and how they do work or how your solution will affect them. Let them show you how your project is going to affect them and talk to people. It’s not a combative relationship. We want to understand and be helpful to our stakeholders. Really important concept for your exam. And then in light of all of that though, we have to think about political awareness, that politics are going to happen and having some effective listening here, really understanding what people are saying and what the underlying intent may be.

That’s political awareness, understanding some politics, some other methods to engage stakeholders. Remember our team charter. So our team charter has those ground rules. Well, in our ground rules we’re talking about how do we act as a team, how do we operate as a team. So when it comes to our project team, everyone is responsible for enforcing ground rules, which includes change control. So stakeholders may come to the team and try to do some scope creep. That should be one of our ground rules here. So the team charter comes into play that we respect the change control system and how things can come into change management meetings is a common tool and technique.

 So when it comes to engaging stakeholders, we’re talking about doing some decision making and some issue resolution. Sometimes you just have to make the decision that some people aren’t going to be happy with. So you have to make a decision that’s best for the project. Lessons learned in retrospective if you’re an adaptive environment, kick off meetings. We move from planning into execution. We do a kickoff meeting. If you’re an adaptive, you do sprint planning or that iteration planning and then status updates. So you’re communicating and that’s a way of engaging stakeholders. So keep people involved with your status reports. All right, great job. Those are some ways to engage stakeholders.

3. Identifying the Project Stakeholders

In project initiation. We have two processes create the project charter and identify stakeholders. Stakeholder Identification we want to happen as early as possible in the project because we know what happens if you miss identifying a stakeholder and you have to find them later. They’re not going to be very happy. They may have new required requirements and that can have a big ripple effect through the project. So, stakeholder identification, we try to capture and complete this process as early as possible in the project. When we do stakeholder identification, we want to identify the groups and the individuals that are affected by our project and the groups and individuals that can affect our project. So we want to document that stakeholder information.

So we think about the public at large. You think about the people actually paying for the project. You think about your project team. They are stakeholders. And then you think about the recipient and how they will use what you’re creating, that they are stakeholders as well. So we identify stakeholders and then we document their information in the stakeholder register. And we’ve seen the stakeholder register pop up many times through our course. Let’s look at the Edo’s for identifying stakeholders. Our inputs, the project charter, the business documents like the business case and the benefits management plan, the project management plan, communications management plan, stakeholder engagement plan, project documents, change log, the issue log requirements, documentation, any agreements or contractual relationships, and EEF and OPA tools and techniques.

 You need expert judgment. You’re going to do some data gathering, like questionnaires surveys, brainstorming, data analysis. You’re going to study the information. So you have document analysis, but also stakeholder analysis, really understanding stakeholders concerns and interest in the project. We’ll do some data representation. There’s a few charts that you want to know. With stakeholder engagement, we’ll do some stakeholder mapping and representation. Those are some of those charts as well. And meetings.

You’re going to go out and meet with stakeholders and you’ll meet with them on a regular basis. The outputs of identifying stakeholders will be the stakeholder register. That’s the primary output. You might have change requests as you identify stakeholders, you may also identify requirements. The PM plan updates requirements management plan updates, communications management plan updates. The risk plan could be updated and your stakeholder engagement plan could be updated. Remember, this is an Iterative activity.

So we don’t have the plan right now, but as we go into planning, we’ll create it. But this is iterative. So we may have updates to the plan. You might also have some updates to some project documents. The assumption log, the issue log, and the risk register could all be updated. So who are stakeholders? We know that stakeholders are the people and the organization that are involved in your project. They can be affected positively or negatively. And it’s anyone or any group that has influence over the project. So some tricky things can happen here. You think about the inspector.

You think about the people in the procurement department or whatever framework you have or workflow that you have to get work done in your organization. Those people are stakeholders. They can have an influence over your project. So be careful. We think about stakeholders. They’re not just the team and not just customers. They can be people that are kind of on the fringe of the project, but they certainly influence the project. So we look for people that are affected. Who will this project affect? What people can exert influence, like the inspectors. I try to identify stakeholders as early as possible. You don’t want to miss people when you go out and identify stakeholders.

This helps to create a stakeholder management strategy or a stakeholder engagement strategy. So how will we engage stakeholders and keep them excited, keep them bought into the project, and to keep moving towards creating the solution, we want to classify stakeholders according to their interest in the project, their influence, and their involvement.

So what’s their level of interest? What’s their level of influence? So high interest, high influence and high involvement. That’s a very important stakeholder. So people will have varying levels here of interest, influence and involvement. Data gathering is one of our tools and techniques. So you have a lot of stakeholders that you need to talk to and engage.

So it’s not always feasible to have a one on one interview. So maybe we do some questionnaires and surveys to help identify are you a stakeholder or not? Brainstorming. Remember, we can get our project team together and we could do some brainstorming. Or there’s another variation of this called brain writing, where I take an opportunity to brainstorm in private and then we come to the meeting with all of our brainstorming ideas ready to go. So data gathering techniques to identify stakeholders is a key tool and technique you should know. All right, great job. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

4. Performing Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis is an activity that you’ll do to really study and understand stakeholders in your project. You want to understand what are stakeholders concerns, how do they feel threatened or excited about the project, and even what are their perceived threats. So you can combat those or put those at ease. So stakeholders stakeholder analysis is we’re identifying stakeholders, but we’re also understanding their information. We’re understanding where they’re coming from. Throughout the course in the pinbox, you’ll see this phrase of key stakeholders.

 Key stakeholders are really people in a decision making role. So your project sponsor or functional manager or a representative from a stakeholder group, those are key stakeholders. They make decisions. We want to interview stakeholders to identify stakeholders. So what I mean by this is sometimes one of the best ways to find new stakeholders is to just ask an existing stakeholder who else should be involved in this project or who else should I talk to about this? And then they can ponder it and they give you some ideas of who else is a stakeholder. A phrase that I like to use is to describe stakeholder stakes, a way of seeing where stakeholders are staking out opinions or feelings about your project. So their interest level, how are they affected by the project?

That’s what people are interested in, whether they’re for it or against it. They see how the project affects them in their work life or even their personal life. Then what about their rights? Do they have legal rights in your project or even moral rights? The ownership, you have a stakeholder that owns an asset, like a piece of equipment or a property that’s going to be affected by your construction project knowledge stakeholders are often seen as subject matter experts, especially when it comes to requirements gathering and really understanding the requirements for the project. How do they contribute to the project, what’s their stake there that they provide money, resources, or they may just have some general support and they’re telling others why this project is good and needs to happen. There are three steps that you should know for stakeholder identification. You identify the project stakeholders and what is their interest, their influence, their contributions, their contact information always important, and their expectations.

We prioritize the stakeholders based on power, influence and impact. And then we want to anticipate and then plan for how these stakeholders are going to act based on different project scenarios. So you’re thinking about, as you do, different key activities or milestones or what if scenarios, how will that affect different stakeholders, like a delay or an increase in cost or an activity that may disrupt their work? So I want to anticipate that and engage the stakeholder about that potential issue.

Stakeholder Analysis we can use a grid like we see here to determine the stakeholders and how we manage or engage those different stakeholders. So there’s three different types of grids. They’re all very similar. You have a power interest grid. And that’s what I’m showing here, a power influence or an influence impact. So on the y axis you can see we have power and on the x axis you see that we have interest. So you take your stakeholders and then you plot them out in these different squares based on the high to low amount of power. And then you cross that with the low to high amount of interest. So for example, you might have someone that has a high power in the project or the organization, but they have a low amount of interest in your project.

So you might put them down in the monitor square. A stakeholder that has a high amount of power and a high amount of interest, you would manage closely. And so you do this for power influence or influence impact. It works the same way. There’s also what’s called a salience model where you gauge stakeholders on power, urgency and legitimacy. So how much power do they have? Is it an urgent request or they urgent for the project to get done, or a particular requirement? Or are they even legitimate though? Do they even belong in the project? Or is their demand even legitimate? So this is something you should know for your exam.

You’ll probably see something like this or mapping stakeholders out. So this is stakeholder analysis in a power interest grid. When we think about stakeholder analysis, we’re really thinking about influence. So how does stakeholders influence the project? And how does the project manager and the project team and just the project itself, how does it influence stakeholders? So we think about influence, you think about upward influence. So how do we influence senior management or a customer or even a project steering committee downward? Think about the project team, a SME or a consultant outward influence. The project manager can influence suppliers, vendors, government agencies, customers or the public sidewards is where I am working with other project managers or even middle management for the same resources that my project needs.

And then we do prioritization. So some stakeholders are more important than others. So how do we influence those? The Stakeholder Register is a document which has the stakeholder name and classification. We give the geographical location where we can find those people, what’s their role and contribution, and what about their particular requirements and expectations. The Stakeholder Register also documents what’s their influence over the project, how would the project aim to influence them, which phase of the project will that stakeholder be most interested in? And then give some details about the stakeholders role. So are they an internal or external stakeholder? Are they supportive of the project? Are they neutral or negative or whatever the case may be? So the Stakeholder Register is a document you’ll use throughout the project. So this is one of those examples where here we are at the end of the Pimbach guide and this is a document that we’ve used in every one of our knowledge areas as stakeholders interact with the project and we interact with stakeholders. So the Stakeholder Register is a really important document and it’s integrated like we saw way back in chapter four in the Pinbock guide with project integration management. So know the Stakeholder register and stakeholder analysis assist.

5. Planning Stakeholder Management

Now that we’ve identified stakeholders, we want to go in and talk about how will we plan stakeholder management, how will we create a plan to engage our stakeholders. So we want to develop a strategy for stakeholder engagement. So what will be our approach and our plan? What techniques will be used to engage stakeholders and keep them engaged throughout the project? So we need an analysis of stakeholder needs. We want to create a plan for managing stakeholders. And when I say managing stakeholders, we’re not talking about telling them what to do, we’re talking about engagement, that sense of ownership and participation and buy in in our project. So we’re creating this strategy. It’s an analysis of what stakeholders want in the project, what’s important to stakeholders and engaging them in the project. It’s an alignment with other stakeholders.

So we think about all the different stakeholder groups that may have competing objectives, but we need to create some management there and a strategy of how do we align these objectives for the best interest of all stakeholders and the organization. We also prioritize stakeholders based on a lot of different factors their power, their influence, their impact on the project, who’s paying for the project. So those are all things that we talk about here in planning stakeholder engagement or edo’s to plan stakeholder engagement.

The charter, your project management plan. We’re going to be looking at the resource management plan, communications plan, and our risk management plan. Some documents that we’ll need, the assumption log, change log, issue log, the schedule, the risk register, the stakeholder register agreements with our vendors and between departments, EEF and OPA. So a lot of those inputs we’ve seen over and over as inputs. So it’s no different here. We’re just taking it in light of the stakeholder engagement tools and techniques, expert judgment. Stakeholders are experts. Data gathering, so benchmarking, data analysis, assumptions and constraint analysis, decision making, so doing some prioritization or ranking.

And then we’ll do some data representation like mind mapping. We’ll create one of those stakeholder engagement assessment, matrix a table of how engaged stakeholders are in our project, and then create goals for stakeholder engagement. And of course, we have meetings. The only output of plan stakeholder engagement is the stakeholder engagement plan. You may have to update this plan periodically based on what’s happening in the project. So we start a new phase. We may have a new group of stakeholders that we have to address. Now, you might have changes that happen in your organization or industry that would introduce new stakeholders and change the way you engage stakeholders or include those new stakeholders in engagement. So we also want to consider that the process outputs can trigger a review of stakeholder engagement strategies. So what this means is the results of any of our 49 processes could cause us to have to go back and look at stakeholder engagement. So a good example is risk.

You have an output of risk. You’ve identified a new risk, or you have to do a risk response that may cause some stakeholder engagement or a change in our strategy. Same thing with a quality issue and scope validation. So the output of a risk can cause us to go back and think about how do we better engage our stakeholders. All right, there are five levels you need to know when it comes to stakeholder engagement. So we do an analysis of where the stakeholder is now, and then that helps us create goals of maintaining or improving engagement. So an unaware stakeholder, they don’t know your projects even existent. So we’ve missed them in initiation.

So they’re completely unaware. They’re not engaged, obviously, because they don’t know about it. And typically, those aren’t going to be very happy people when they find out about your project and what it’s going to do to them. You might have a stakeholder that’s resistant. They really don’t want your project around. They feel like it’s getting in the way. It’s not needed, and they’re not a big fan of your project. You have a stakeholder who’s neutral, like those people in procurement, they’re just neutral. They’re doing their job to help procure. They’re supportive that they’re in favor of your project. That’s a great project. Good luck. Or they’re leading.

They’re very excited about your project, and they want it to be successful, and they’re acting like a champion for your project. And those are always great stakeholders to have, unless they start getting a little too leading or a little too excited, and then they kind of get in the way. So you’ve got to balance. We want that, but we have to balance. So the stakeholder engagement plan the stakeholder engagement plan is we say, what’s the desired level of engagement and the current engagement level? What’s the scope and the impact of change to stakeholders?

We want to look for interrelationships and overlap among our stakeholder groups. What are our communication requirements? What information will be distributed? So back to our communications management plan, why are we distributing that information, and what’s the time frame and the cadence for distribution of that information? So you can see that the stakeholder management plan really has a lot of overlap with the communications management plan. So the stakeholder engagement plan, I should say, has overlap with our communications management. All right, great job.

6. Managing Stakeholder Engagement

Let’s start our conversation about the stakeholder management processes by first identifying some key concepts you’ll need to know for your exam. When it comes to stakeholder management, stakeholders are anyone, any group or individual that is impacted or affected by your project. Now, many stakeholders can also impact your project. They have some influence on project decisions and how you manage the project work. Stakeholders can be positive or negative that they want your project to happen or they are not in love with your project.

The project can also affect stakeholders positively or negatively. So there’s a relationship that goes both ways between the project and the stakeholders. There are four processes we’ll discuss in stakeholder management identifying project stakeholders. It’s one of our first activities, our first process that we do after the project charter. And it may actually overlap because we want to identify key stakeholders. But this is an initiating process. We’ll plan for stakeholder management. We manage stakeholder engagement and then we monitor stakeholder engagement. So plan for engagement, manage and then monitor engagement. Some trends for stakeholder Management we want to keep the project team involved with stakeholder engagement. Project team members should not be just isolated from the rest of the project. They serve as subject matter experts and often will interact with the stakeholders. And stakeholders can interact with the project team.

Now, there are times when we want to defend the team or basically create some space for the team to focus on the work, that we don’t need constant interruptions by stakeholders. But there are other times where it’s appropriate for the team to be involved with stakeholder engagement. We will periodically review with stakeholders and look for new stakeholders that have come into the project. So stakeholder identification is not a one and done activity that you’ll periodically look for any new stakeholders based on shifts in the organization or changes in the project. You want to meet with stakeholders to discuss how the project will affect them. You know, a project can affect people’s lives, their work life, and they have concerns about the project.

A trend that is becoming more and more common is to take a shared of sense, a sense of shared ownership and some synergy and cooperation and some collaboration with our stakeholders and our vendors and even other entities when we work together to realize an opportunity. So some cooperation, stakeholders become partners in the project that it’s not, we take your requirements and see you later, that they’re engaged throughout the project, the shared ownership, so they’re not just recipients of what the project creates. We can do some tailoring for stakeholder management and we often have to, based on the conditions of the project and the organization that we work in as a project manager, we have to consider the stakeholder diversity.

So we’re talking about the cultural diversity, the number of stakeholders that we have involved. The more people that you have involved in a project, the more complex it becomes for stakeholder engagement to create relationships with those stakeholders and communication demands like we saw in chapter ten in the Pembach guide. More networks among stakeholders, how stakeholders interact with each other and they talk about your project will create more communication demands. Because the more people that are involved and the more that they talk with one another can introduce some miscommunications. So we want to have really good clear communication channels and a sense of accurate and direct communication among all the stakeholders to reduce that possibility of miscommunication that introduces a new risk.

We can use some communication technology to alleviate some of those risks. So think about a project website or a status report or a project report that you distribute on a regular basis. Or using some communication technologies like social media or private group for your project, where people can talk with one another and find clear and accurate messaging from the project manager or the project sponsor so we can tailor these stakeholder management processes in an agile environment. Stakeholders do participate in the project.

Stakeholders can speak directly with the team, especially for clarification about requirements. We generally have a lot less bureaucracy or at least a lower tolerance for disruptions where the project team can communicate with stakeholders. We have less bureaucracy as the goal here, that we don’t want to feel like we have to go through so many formal channels to talk to a stakeholder. Transparency is encouraged in the project in an adaptive environment. All right, those are some key considerations that you need to know about stakeholder engagement for your exam.

7. Monitor Stakeholder Engagement

Now that we’re in motion in our project, we’ve created a stakeholder engagement plan. We’re looking for ways to engage stakeholders. We want to make certain that we’re following our plan, that we’re monitoring stakeholder engagement. So this is integrated with other knowledge areas, because all those other knowledge areas, we’re interacting with stakeholders, all of them it. So the other knowledge areas and processes overlap here. With monitoring stakeholder engagement, it’s most directly linked to communications. So our communications management plan and schedule overlap as well. Obviously with stakeholder engagement. Let’s check out the edo’s here for monitoring stakeholder engagement. The PM plan is obviously an edo, specifically resource management plan, your communications plan and stakeholder engagement plan. Project documents, your issue log, the lessons learned register communications, the risk register and the stakeholder register.

Work performance data and EEF and OPA tools and techniques to monitor stakeholder engagement data analysis, alternatives analysis, root cause analysis, stakeholder analysis, some decision making, multi criteria decision analysis, doing some voting. We’ll do some data representation that engagement assessment matrix communication skills are needed. Obviously you want feedback and to offer feedback and then presentations, you may have to present information about your project to stakeholders. You’ll need some interpersonal and team skills.

So active listening, cultural awareness, leadership, networking, and being politically aware. Don’t you want to be political? Not necessarily. And then meetings our outputs of stakeholder engagement work performance, information change request, project management plan updates, resource management plan updates and you’ll update your communications management plan and your stakeholder engagement plan updates to our project documents issue log may need to be updated. Obviously, your lessons learned, the risk register and the stakeholder register could all be updated. So we talk about monitoring stakeholder engagement. We’re making certain that we are actively engaging stakeholders. So we’re relying on our project management information system.

Our information management system can help us engage stakeholders because we’re looking at activities, we’re looking at risk, we’re looking at issues. All of those affect people. If it affects a person, that person is a stakeholder, and that can affect them positively or negatively. In either case, we want to be involved with stakeholder engagement. We want to make sure we’re communicating and we have a clear understanding between the parties. We have to use expert judgment, like we talked about decision making. You may have to make some decisions that are not popular with some stakeholders. You’re going to meet with stakeholders.

We always want to be honest and direct with project news, good or bad. We don’t run from it, we don’t hide it. We go to the problem. So you’re always honest and direct. Communication often face to face. Communication is one of the best approaches here. Data analysis techniques, alternatives analysis. So you think about other solutions. Root cause analysis. Remember RCA, we’re looking for causal factors, not symptoms that are contributing to why a stakeholder doesn’t feel engaged, or they’re negatively engaged, or they aren’t a fan of your project, and then we continue to do stakeholder analysis throughout the Pinback guide in this course, we’ve seen this idea of interpersonal and team skills. So you’ve seen all of this before. It’s just really important when it comes to communication and stakeholder engagement. You need that emotional intelligence.

You need to be able to understand what a person is saying and how does that affect their lives and what’s their concern with that objective of the project. Begin cultural awareness, understanding the different cultures and how that could influence the project or how your project may be interpreted in the light of that culture. What about leadership? You got to show leadership, and project team members can take leadership. Networking is going to happen. You want to make relationships, long term relationships over short term relationships, and, of course, having some political awareness. So stakeholder engagement, we’re talking about engaging our stakeholders, keeping them involved and excited in our project. All right, great job. Keep moving forward.

8. Section Wrap: Project Stakeholder Management

Great job reaching this point in the course on stakeholder management. Stakeholder management is a relatively new knowledge area in the history of the Pmbok. It’s pretty established here in Pmbok Guide, 6th edition. It was introduced in the fifth edition, so it’s still relatively young in the history of the PIMB. But of course, stakeholder engagement and stakeholder management has always happened that you want to engage stakeholders and keep stakeholders involved and excited about your project. So stakeholder engagement is closely related to communications, so communications and stakeholder engagement overlap.

Now, in light of your PMP exam, who are your stakeholders? As you prepare to pass the PMP, so you think about your colleagues, your family, your friends, that you’ve had to make some decisions to not participate in some things, to take that time to focus on the PMP. And maybe you have some stakeholders in your life who are like, oh, you don’t need that. The PMP, that’s not for you, it’s too much, it’s overrated, or whatever the case may be. But you’ve made a decision to go towards the PMP, you may have some other stakeholders, and I know you have at least one, that they’re cheering you on, that they want you excited and they want you to be successful and they want you to study and to learn and to pass this test.

So you have at least one stakeholder that is a leading stakeholder, but I hope you have a lot more at the end of a project. We want to thank the stakeholders, we want to thank them for their participation, their support, their cheer, and we want to show them what’s come out of our project. So in your PMP project, don’t forget to thank those stakeholders who have given you the space and the time to study and have been supportive of your effort to pass the PMP. So go to those family members and friends that have cheered you on and show them that you’ve passed and show them you have succeeded in reaching your goal. And of course, you can go to those negative stakeholders and show them as well.

Great job finishing this section on project stakeholder management. I told you it was a fun section, right? I think it’s enjoyable that it’s all about keeping our stakeholders engaged. If you have engaged stakeholders, then generally your projects are more successful. Not always, but generally. We talked about creating a stakeholder management plan, doing some analysis on our stakeholders, managing that engagement of our stakeholders and maintaining engagement. And then we did an exercise about mapping stakeholder engagement with one of those power influencer grids, about mapping out where these different stakeholders are on their level of authority or interest or power or whichever grid is most appropriate for your project. This was the last chapter in the Peach Guide, but we’re not done yet with the courts. We have some more things to talk about to really concrete your learning and your understanding and to keep working towards your goal. Our goal of you passing the PMP. So let’s keep moving forward. You’re almost there. I have confidence in you. Keep pressing on.