- Stakeholders Engagement
To “Engage”: is to bind by contract; fasten; hold fast; take part in; bring into conflict; interlock with another
Approaches to stakeholder engagement:
- Buffering vs. Bridging
- Damage Control vs. Decision Making
Example : Shell Oman Marketing Company SAOG (SOM) yesterday reiterated its commitment to Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) standards at a HSSE Stakeholders Engagement Forum held on October 20, 2002.
The aim of the forum was to demonstrate to external participants Shell Oman`s commitment to engage, communicate key messages on SOM`s HSSE programme, and identify current issues, concerns and attitudes surrounding HSSE considerations. [Press Release, www.shelloman.com]
The Challenge of Selecting Levels and Forms of Engagement (Refer to Civic Engagement for Change example P.P. Presentation)
- Barriers to Stakeholders Engagement
- Arrogance (typical in companies with high technical base).
- Winning over hearts as well as minds
- Lack of mutual knowledge leads to adversarial positions
- Lack of corporate culture of listening to non-traditional audiences
- Communicating with target users (Project Stakeholders)
Communicating within the Team
Internal communication within the project teams is to meet their four major communication needs4:
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Responsibility of each team member for different parts of the project
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Coordination information that enables team members to work together efficiently
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Status information tracking the progress, identifying problems and enabling team members to take corrective action
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Authorization information - decisions made by customers, sponsors, and upper management - that relates to the project and its business environment, and enables the team members to keep all project decisions synchronized.
Internal communications happen primarily through team meetings, memos, voice mail, and e-mail. Project managers need to be able to , , and well, lead and effectively.
Communicating with Upper Management and Customers
External stakeholders, such as sponsor, customer and resource manager, must be kept informed of progress and their inputs solicited. "The communication plan should detail the strategy not only for informing these stakeholders, but for actively managing their expectations as well4".
Answer the following questions to decide what information should be relayed to managers and customers:
- Who needs information, why, and when?
- What type of information will they need and in what detail?
- What will you goal be when you communicate with customer and management and what medium will best accomplish that?
Communicating with other External Players
Every component and every stakeholder in your project, however a minor role he or she may play, is important. Even minor role players have the potential to come out large if they fall behind schedule, eventually affecting your critical path. So, don't make the mistake of assuming that all players outside your department or your company, nominated as contact persons, are already on board psychologically. Be proactive in making them a successful part of your project through making personal contact, establishing some face to face, asking for their help, providing them with all necessary information timely, and sending thank-you notes acknowledging their level contribution to them personally and their supervisors.
Change Management
Set up an Escalation Procedure for rapid communication with upper management when a project begins to run over cost or schedule, or rapid decisions need to be made in response to internal or external changes. This escalation should determine which level of upper management to contact depending on the degree of variance from the project plan4.
Close-out Reporting
The deliverables from the project close-out serve two purposes. They:
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finalize the project in the eyes of the , and
- present a learning opportunity.
Formal acceptance of the final deliverables by the customer signifies that the project is complete. The lessons-learned report presents opportunities for improvement of both your project management process and your personal skills.
- Relative powers of PM and stakeholders & its influence on Communications
The "project manager" is generally seen as the person responsible for the management of a project and its overall success or failure. However, in many organisations (particularly large complex organisations) the position of the project manager within the overall hierarchy is too low/junior to allow many vital project management decisions to be made based on the project manager's personal authority alone.
The effect of these organisational structures is to require the project manager to garner referred power from more senior stakeholders and colleagues to allow him/her to manage effectively. Whilst on occasions (particularly in emergencies) it may be appropriate for the project manager to seek forgiveness for decisions made rather than permission to undertake certain actions, effective project management requires the considered application of authority to allow decisions to be made and directions issued at the appropriate time.
stakeholders in a position of strong influence hold negative interests may be critical to project success. This level of understanding can best be reached by conducting a formal assessment of each stakeholder's level of importance and influence to the project.
Influence indicates a stakeholder's relative power over and within a project. A stakeholder with high influence would control key decisions within the project and have strong ability to facilitate implementation of project tasks and cause others to take action. Usually such influence is derived from the individual's hierarchical, economic, social, or political position, though often someone with personal connections to other persons of influence also qualifies. Other indicators identified in [3] include: expert knowledge, negotiation and consensus building skills, charisma, holder of strategic resources, etc.
Importance indicates the degree to which the project cannot be considered successful if needs, expectations, and issues are not addressed. This measure is often derived based on the relation of the stakeholder need to the project's goals and purposes. For instance, the human resources department may be key to getting the project new resources at a critical time, and the accounting department key to keeping the finances in order and the project manager out of jail. The users of the project's product or service typically are considered of high importance.
These two measures, influence and importance, are distinct from each other. A project may have an important financial sponsor that can shut down the project at any time for any reason, but does not participate at all in the day-to-day operations of the project. The combination of these measures provides insight not only into how stakeholders interact, but can help identify additional assumptions and risks.
- Influence of Perspectives on Communication (perception)
- Experience
- Knowledge
- Cultural Values
- Personal Agendas
- What is Effective Communication, and Why do PM Needs to Communicate Effectively with Different Kinds of Stakeholders
We can say that a communication is effective if we interpret communication from others in the manner they intended, and they in turn interpret our communication accurately.
Constant, effective communication among all project stakeholders ranks high among the factors leading to the success of a project. It is a key prerequisite of getting the right things done in the right way. As knowledge is power, sharing knowledge empowering every project stakeholder.
A project communication plan is the written strategy for getting the right information to the right at the right time. Each stakeholder has different requirements for information as they participate in the project in different ways.
For information to be used, it has to be delivered to its target users timely. As a project manager, while developing your communication plan, you need to decide how often to contact each stakeholder and with what information.
"Satisfy stakeholders!" is the project manager's mantra. For successful projects, it's not enough to deliver on the customer's demand; projects have to meet all stakeholder expectations. Identifying stakeholders is a primary task because all the important decisions during the initiation, planning and execution stages of the project are made by these stakeholders.
Visibility rooms are the areas displaying key project documents for easy reference by the project stakeholders. They should contain the following kind of documents:
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The project , milestone chart, and issues log
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The current version of the statement of work, , project schedule, organization chart, responsibility matrix, risk management plan, and other project management information and forms
- Product development information (design, prototyping, testing, scaling-up, interim deliverables, etc.)
- How to communicate with Stakeholders (Ways / methods of communication)
- Status Reports
- Status Meetings
Status reports, team meetings, and roles / responsibilities are just a few of the tools available. The key here is to communicate with your sponsor and stakeholders clear expectations of what they will get and when they will get it. It’s also a good idea to establish an “Actions, Issues, Decisions, and Risk Log”.
I’ve found that a status report, project plan and AIDR communicated to the sponsor and stakeholders on a weekly basis keeps them adequately informed. [Bill Kane, CM (has over twenty years management experience)]
- Communication Barriers
Some of the main barriers to communication concern:
- Perception barriers Occurs when individuals view the same message in different ways. Factors influencing perception include the individual’s level of education and region of experience.
- Noise Concerns factors extraneous to the interpersonal communication process, but which interfere with or distract attention from the transmission and reception of the intended meaning.
- Power differences Research consistency shows that employees distort upward communication and that superiors often have a limited understanding of subordinate’s roles, experiences and problems.
- Gender differences Men and women use different conversational styles, which can lead to misunderstanding.
- Language Variations in accent and dialect can cause communication difficulties.
- Personality and interests Such as the likes and dislikes of individuals, affect communications. People tend to listen carefully to topics of interest but turn a deaf ear to unfamiliar or boring topics.
- Poor Communication
Poor project communication can lead to a variety of problems and delays. Today's fast-paced business environment doesn't always allow for effective communication to all project stakeholders. As a result, a project manager is often forced to spend valuable time dealing with mishandled communication instead of dealing with real issues.
- Improving communications with Stakeholders
- Communication Problems
- Avoiding communication problems, and influence of communication problems and poor communication on Projects and stakeholders
- Conclusion
Proper communication is vital to the success of the project, and managers may spend 80% or more of their time in planning, organizing, leading, controlling, and we note that communication is central to all of these activities.
The technique described here compels project leaders to identify and support the interests of the key individuals or groups. When interests that cannot be supported arise, the knowledge that they exist and what level of influence the stakeholder may impose can be a great asset to the project team. The difference between success and failure can be simply knowing project advocates and opponents, understanding their respective needs and levels of influence, and aligning the project accordingly
Question 2 Outlines :
Managing conflict:
- Define conflict and conflict management
Conflict is to “fight, struggle, opposition, clashing with, inconsistent with” [Quote from the Oxford Dictionary]
Example of conflict is conflict on resource or funding, differing professional opinions, interpersonal conflicts.
Lack of communication or understanding causes conflict.
Conflict management is a structured way (formal or informal) of dealing with the event of the conflict and its foreseeable impact.
“Key aspects of conflict resolution include good listening skills, flexibility, and a willingness to change Bumbaugh notes, simple communication, however, is at the heart of conflict resolution and can also serve as a primary method of conflict prevention” (DeVoe, 1999 – InfoWorld)
- Conflict styles according to team members personality types
“Thriving on Conflict – User Conflict to Fuel Success” by Bill Kuehn & Steve Wille
- Views of conflict
- Traditional view
- Contemporary view
- Interactionist view
- Conflict in projects
- Goal-oriented conflicts
- Administrative conflicts
- Interpersonal conflicts
- Managing conflicts in projects / Project conflicts and recommended solutions
- Conflict intensity ranking
- Stimulating conflict
- Resolving structural conflicts
- Strategies for managing conflict in a project
- Resolving conflict
Management of Change:
Example : Change Manager for Oracle:
Oracle ERP Change Management
Project Whitepaper
ERP Applications perform some of the most critical business functions within
companies around the globe. During the ERP implementation process, companies will
make significant investments in customizations to adapt the ERP product to their business
model. In some cases, the investment in these customizations can be comparable to or
exceed the original cost of the ERP software. Implementing Application Changes
into these highly complex systems can be both labor-intensive and error-prone.
Currently, many of the large commercial ERP products have been reengineered
for web-based architectures. Current ERP clients still using the Client/Server
versions are faced with a challenging, upgrade. In these environments, the best
way to manage change is to be prepared for change, whether from
customizations, patches or upgrades.
Version Management:
Version Management software is used primarily for managing version integrity & security. In a multi-
person development environment, Check-in & Checkout processes are used to ensure that only one
developer has a working version of a program at a given time. Once the new version has been tested and
approved for promotion, VM software is also used to promote programs from the test environment to the
production environment(s). VM software is commonly used with configuration management software to
configure/bundle and migrate new releases/versions of software.
Change Management:
While VM manages the integrity of custom developed software, many environments may develop or
customize software on a limited basis. Typically, those companies tend to use commercial software. CM
software is directed to those companies that have some combination of commercial software with
customizations. CM software captures and documents application changes, originating both from vendor
patches and local customizations. In typical ERP environments, CM software is used to protect the
integrity of the operating environment during software changes, both for commercial and custom
developed software. At the same time, CM impact analysis features provide better approach to managing
and analyzing changes across an applications environment.
In order to accomplish this, CM software will monitor changes to an application, & database, support
Impact analysis of changes (dependency analysis), publish/document changes, reconcile differences
across application environments (e.g., Test vs. Production).
Page 4 13-Nov-01
Why Change Management?
To Manage The Complexity of Customized ERP Applications
Many ERP Application Support groups are faced with the extremely complex task of managing
application customizations while introducing vendor software patches and new Application Releases
(e.g., Oracle Release 11i). Many commercial ERP software vendors have reengineered their ERP
products to make them web-enabled. Many of their customers have tremendous investments in their
implementation and customizations of their prior client/server versions of their ERP products. In many cases, these ERP implementations required more than two years to complete and cost in the tens of
millions.
Change Management Workflow
The Change Management Workflow addresses the key change events that occur during the ERP lifecycle. These
events are generally associated with new releases of ERP software, or large patches or customizations within a
given release. As depicted in the above diagram, vendor patches can be introduced that cause problems to local
customizations. In extreme cases, these patches can cause customizations to malfunction, or even overlay custom
code. Assessing the impact of changes, both through customizations and software patches, is the most effective
method to prevent new software releases from causing problems.
Six Basic Change Management Needs
Maintaining and updating customized ERP applications present complex challenges to ensure that patches
or local customizations don’t create problems when introduced into the production environment. The
requirements for Change Management can be summarized in six simple points that should be considered
as part of any CM strategy.
1. Knowing the difference between a customized environment and an unmodified
Oracle 10SC environment.
2. Finding the customizations made by your organization and the changes made by
Oracle.
3. Keeping your customized modules linked to the related Oracle module.
4. Performing impact analysis on your changes to forms, libraries, server code, and the
database.
5. Generating and distributing your custom code along with Oracle’s code.
6. Managing your development, test, and production environments.
What to Expect from a Successful CM Strategy
Many of the latent benefits of an effective CM & VM strategy are still largely untapped by IT managers.
As painful as it is, the trial and error method still prevails. Unfortunately, CM software is still fairly new,
and lacks the acceptance that VM software has attained. Some CM offerings are limited to automating
and managing the application of vendor patches. While patch application software is very useful, it does
not address the full range of CM issues, including but limited to application customizations. When you
combine both VM & CM software as part of a unified CM strategy, you should see almost immediate
benefits from your effort.
• Allows developers to quickly & easily identify changes across environments and
versions;
• Provides an invaluable source of technical documentation through automated change
publishing;
• Reduces the developer & analyst effort required to research changes, and correct
resulting problems;
• Enforces standardization & consistency (i.e., help prevent duplicate file names- “which
one is the right version??” syndrome) ; • Provide developers with detailed change
reports that function as detailed checklists for migrating custom code to release 11i;
• Monitor changes to the ERP environment(s);
• Enabling tool for the internal ERP support organization; requiring fewer hours from
expensive ERP Applications consultants.
