How to Create a Stakeholder Management Plan

 How to Create a Stakeholder Management Plan

To create a reliable stakeholder management plan, we have included a set of steps that you can use as a reference below.

1. Determine the Stakeholders

Before you do anything else, you must identify the stakeholders of the project. There are two types of stakeholders that you can include in your list, which are the internal and external stakeholders. You can quickly identify the internal stakeholders since you can find them within the organization. You can start by looking at the company organization chart. Usually, these people are operation members, IT specialists, etc. At the same time, the external stakeholders can be the investors, customers, media, competitors, government agencies, and other people that are not part of the company. For a smoother implementation of this process, you can use a stakeholder register template.

2. Outline the Stakeholder Management Plan

In this process, you will develop the appropriate strategy that will effectively maintain the stakeholders’ engagement to the project throughout its life cycle. To do it, you have to create a communication management plan. You must take note, however, that each stakeholder may have a distinct influence level on the project. For example, there are stakeholders that you must require their constant engagement in the first few phases of the project. Meanwhile, you will need other stakeholders in the later part. Accounting this factor would be beneficial to your stakeholder management plan.

3. Manage Stakeholder Engagement

To ensure that the project will generate the desired results, you have to determine the needs and expectations of these people. You will also have to involve how you will address the issues if they occur. You will discuss these factors by creating a stakeholder management engagement. For example, part of your strategy for managing the problems is to use an issue log.

4. Monitor the Engagement of the Stakeholders

It can be hard to account for all the stakeholders, especially the external ones, during its early stages. However, by monitoring the stakeholder engagement, you can identify these misses along the way. Aside from that, it will also allow you to determine the defects of the strategies you use. With that, you can mitigate this flaw by updating the plan.

Whether you are creating a construction business plan or consulting project plan, you will need a stakeholder management plan to ensure its success. With the information that we have discussed in this article, you now have an idea on how to create a productive stakeholder management plan that you can rely on. However, you should also know that it just a part of the business plan that you have to develop and maintain. To expand your knowledge about it, you can read our article about the asset management plan and crisis management plan.