Kap 5 - Project manager, sponsors and stakeholders Flashcards
What is a stakeholder?
Project stakeholders are individuals, groups and organisations who are actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected as a result of the project.
Typical stakeholders:
* Project manager
* Sponsor
* Project board
* Financers
* Project champion
* Consultants
* Performing organisation
* Project support office
What is a shareholder?
Shareholders are individuals, groups or organizations that legally ownsone or more shares of stock in a public or private corporation.
All shareholders are stakeholders, but not all stakeholder are
shareholders.
What are the responsibilities of a project manager?
Overall responsibility: To achieve the project’s objectives within the time, cost and quality, performance and any other constraints imposed by the sponsor
Early project responsibility:
- Establish objectives and priorities
- Identify the stakeholders and determine needs and expectations
- Develop effective communication procedures
- Select, build and motivate the project team
- Create a suitable project organisation structure and procurement strategy
- Develop the project scope from the client’s objectives
- Develop the project schedule and budget
- Advise on the selection of participants
Ongoing project responsibility:
- Manage and influence the expectations of the key stakeholders, especially the project sponsor
- Respond to the changing requirements of the project as it progresses through its life cycle
- Serve as the principal point of contact between the sponsor, management and contributors
- Understand the importance of organisational politics and how to make them work for project success
- etc.
What type of soft skills should a project manager exhibit?
- Leading
- Communicating
- Problem solving
- Influencing
- Negoatiating
What are the characteristics and purpose of the project sponsor?
The role of the sponsor is to:
- assess the need and feasibility of the project
- to authorise the expenditure of resources on the project
- ensure that an appropriate management structure is in place for the project to be undertaken.
The sponsor is a key decision maker in the project life cycle. It is the sponsor who ultimately gives or takes away approval for a project to begin, and to continue until completion or termination.
What is the purpose of the senior management in a project?
Senior management decide
- whether the project will proceed.
- Determine the extent of support the project will receive relative to other projects.
Without the support of the senior management, the project will most likely fail.
What is the purpose of the project board?
- A project board or steering committee is a group of people, usually from within the sponsor’s organisation, who have been given responsibility for making executive-level decisions on behalf of the sponsor, throughout the project.
- The project board oversees the planning and execution of the project.
- The project board meets regularly with the project manger to review project progress and consider issues that cannot be resolved by the project manger
Project champion
A project champion is someone who grasps the benefits of and is enthusiastic about the project.
Characteristics:
- Have some personal or positional power in the organization
- Are willing to use that power to benefit the project
- Use their power somewhat non-traditionally or entrepeneurally
- Go well beyond their expected and traditional job responsibilities to help the project
Champion types:
- Creative originator
- Entrepeneur
- Godfather or sponsor
- Project manager
Champion roles:
- Cheerleader
- Visionary
- Politician
- Risk taker
- Ambassador
What is the difference between consultant and contractors?
Contractors, unlike consultants, conduct activities which have already been clearly defined by others. They are therefore less able to influence the sponsor’s requirements as far as their contribution to the project is concerned.
Why is it important to manage the expectations of the stakeholders? (stakeholder management)
Managing stakeholder perceptions and expectations is about generating agreement and harmony between the different views and beliefs held..
Explain the different stages of a stakeholder analysis
Importance - position
Predictability - power model
Intrest - power model
Different skills a project manager needs to know
- Assume ownership for the mission, and to refer to it at all times
- To have long-term vision and the ability to anticipate problems
- To know how to delegate and how to lead the team
- To be conscious of the political aspects, to know the major players
- and their interests and to be able to work with them
- To know how to analyse and to select the best alternative
- To manage by results
- To know how to analyse problems methodically
- To encourage innovation and personal initiative
- To demand excellent individual performance
- To be action-oriented and to stress urgency
- To develop good relations with the major stakeholders: clients, users, suppliers
- To be a good coach and mentor
- To know how to find and to manage information
- To be persuasive in order to overcome obstacles and to obtain support
- To be imaginative and creative
- To show self-control
- To be able to assess the motivation and commitment of people
- To know how to manage
- To establish one’s authority and to defend the project in all
- circumstances
- To be positive and optimistic
