Stakeholder Management and the Communication Plan

A stakeholder is anyone who affects your project or is affected by it: the sponsor who pays, the team that builds, the users who'll live with the result, and the departments that can approve or block it. Stakeholder management means identifying those people early, understanding what each one cares about, and giving them the right information at the right time. The communication plan is the written version of that: a simple table that says who hears what, how and how often.

1. List stakeholders
2. Map power and interest
3. Assign roles with RACI
4. Count the channels
5. Write the communication plan

Step 1: list everyone, not just the obvious people

Let's go back to Summit Ledger, the Denver software company from the initiation lesson, and its self-service help portal. The obvious stakeholders are the sponsor (VP of Customer Success) and the project team. The less obvious ones are where projects get ambushed: the IT security lead who must approve anything that touches customer logins, the CFO who watches the budget, and the support agents whose daily work will change.

To build the list, ask four questions in your kickoff meeting and in one-on-one chats:

• Who pays for this, and who approves it?
• Whose work will change when this is delivered?
• Who has to sign off, inspect or audit anything?
• Who could say no late in the project, and what would make them say it?

Step 2: map power and interest

Not every stakeholder needs the same attention. A power/interest grid places each one according to how much they can influence the project (power) and how much they care about it (interest). Here are Summit Ledger's eight key stakeholders:

Step 3: assign roles with a RACI matrix

Confusion about who decides is one of the most common reasons work stalls. A RACI matrix lists deliverables in rows and people in columns, with one letter per cell:

• R, Responsible: does the work. There can be several.
• A, Accountable: owns the result and makes the final call. Exactly one per row.
• C, Consulted: gives input before the work is done (two-way).
• I, Informed: is told after decisions are made (one-way).

Read it by rows (does every deliverable have exactly one A?) and by columns (is anyone R on too much? Is someone C on everything, slowing every decision?).

Step 4: count the communication channels

Every pair of people on a project is a potential communication channel, a place where information can get lost or distorted. The number of channels grows much faster than the team:

Channels = n × (n − 1) ÷ 2

Team of 8:   8 × 7 ÷ 2  = 28 channels
Team of 12: 12 × 11 ÷ 2 = 66 channels

When Summit Ledger brought in four of the vendor's developers, the team grew from 8 to 12 people: 50% more people, but 38 more channels: the total jumped from 28 to 66, more than double. That's why bigger projects need a written communication plan and a single source of truth (one shared board or folder), not a tangle of side conversations.

Step 5: write the communication plan

The communication plan is a table. It doesn't need to be fancy; it needs to be followed. Summit Ledger's plan:

Here's how a typical week looks once the plan is running:

1. Every day · 15 minTeam stand-upWhat I finished, what I'm doing next, what's blocking me. Problems get solved after the meeting, not during it.
2. ThursdayStatus report draftedDone this week, planned next week, risks, decisions needed. One page, color-coded green, amber or red.
3. Friday · 15 minSponsor check-inWalk through the status, get decisions made, agree on anything to escalate.
4. Every other WednesdayDemo for support agentsShow what's new, collect feedback, recruit article writers.

Common mistakes

Summary

• Stakeholders are everyone who affects or is affected by the project, including people who can block it late.
• The power/interest grid gives four strategies: manage closely, keep satisfied, keep informed, monitor.
• A RACI matrix gives every deliverable exactly one accountable owner.
• Channels = n(n−1)/2: adding people multiplies coordination work.
• A communication plan says who gets what, through which channel, how often and from whom. Deliver bad news early and in person.

Next lesson: Project Scheduling and Gantt Charts. You'll turn the WBS into a dated schedule, estimate durations with three-point estimates and build a Gantt chart in Excel.