Best Practices for Managing and Engaging Project Stakeholders – Khan
Abstract:
Abstract: Effective project stakeholder management and engagement is a critical success factor on virtually every project. This assumes heightened importance especially for projects typi¬cally undertaken in large and complex construction and civil infrastructure development schemes. Effective project stakeholder management and engagement offers several significant benefits, including reducing negative risks to projects, enhancing the planning and execution efficiency of projects, and often bringing about a desirable win-win situation for both the projects as well as their many stakeholders.
Awareness about the importance of good project stakeholder management and engage¬ment has increased precipitously amongst project practitioners in recent years and many projects in construction and civil infrastructure development and other fields are applying sound established practices as well as experimenting with innovative ones. However, inadvertently or otherwise, many projects still exhibit serious stakeholder management and engagement shortcomings with often damaging long-term consequences for them. It is hence important to research existing best practices dealing with stakeholders in addi¬tion to developing new ones and to create and expand awareness about them to a wide audience of project practitioners and decision-makers. Doing so may expedite their application on projects and thus gradually and significantly improve the overall quality of the manage¬ment and engagement of their stakeholders.
In this paper the authors present and discuss twelve project stakeholder management and engagement ‘best practices’. Some of these practices were identified through an analysis of recent project stakeholder literature, other stem from the personal reflections of the authors based on their knowledge of and experience with large projects over a long period of time. Applied collectively and with sincerity, and if sustained and consolidated over time, the best practices discussed in this paper stand to facilitate projects immensely through enhanced performance efficiency and through higher benefits realization after their completion.
PMI Talent Triangle: Strategic and Business Management
