Identifying Key Stakeholders, Part II

There are several key questions you need to ask yourself regarding each particular stakeholder that identify in your project.  Answering these questions will help you understand these people’s needs and concerns, and will allow you to classify them so you can communicate the right message to each individual stakeholder or group of stakeholders.  Some of these questions are:

• How will this person (or group) be affected by the migration project? How will their work be changed?
• What is the level of influence that this person has in the project? Are they supporting the project, threatening it or just awaiting its results?
• What is the level of authority that this person has in the organization?  Is he or she a decision maker?
• What kind of information does this person expect about the project? Do they need progress, financial or technical reports?
• What kind of language should be used with this person? Technical, administrative or just simple language?

Note that this list is not exhaustive, as more questions may be necessary depending on your particular situation.  Once you have answered these questions, you will be able to classify project stakeholders into several groups, based on their influence, authority, concerns and informative needs.  This will allow you to focus on the most important stakeholders (without abandoning the other ones, of course!), and to project the most appropriate messages about the migration project to each stakeholder or group of stakeholders.  Keeping important stakeholders on your side will help pave your way to a successful migration project!

In the next posts, we will take a look at some of the typical stakeholders in a migration project.