Understanding sponsors’ priorities

By Eugenio, on June 25th, 2009

The Business Case contains the list of benefits produced to the business by the project.
Is it possible from this reading, to understand which are the forces that will trace the project’s path?

Can the benefits offer a substantial view of the customers?
Are they the most influential slice of the Stakeholder?
Will the composition of stakeholders (and their influencers) be the strongest ingredient that holds the sway to form the nature of the project itself?

Compass

Whether it is completely true (i.e. the business environment and technical choices are less important than stakeholders’ structure) or not, the search of priorities has to start with them. This is the time, for the PM to prepare (and test) the strategies.

To outline the Project’s Approach (Prince2), that includes both the technical topics as well as the organizational aspects, the PM has to find, which are the most active (if not powerful) forces that must be addressed. Few of them can be harnessed, other shall not be ignored.

At the post’s end, there are some extremely interesting articles about how to organize this fundamental task. It is a daunting one, to reconcile the (almost) linear logic of technologies and businesses with the conundrum of the human nature. However, this is the added value of the management.

His/her ability to milk the real aims (that shall not differ too much from the stated ones) from the main stakeholders improve enormously the chances of success.

Since the project lives in a dynamic reality, the maps created to chart every person’s importance for the project need to be updated. The project itself will be perceived by some stakeholders as an interference with their working life. It is a potentially big as well as undefined source of risks. For example, to ask for participating to a meeting focused on UAT planning, the PM has to agree it with the boss department. This case offers a glimpse of the complexity of the cobweb of relations (For want of a nail).
The culture is the common factor. It has to be intended as an (Merriam-Webster definition:) “integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations”. In this case, the kinship has its own specific (sociological) design, that change for every company.

The role of business analysts

Stakeholders’ management is a completely different activity from “collecting (managing) business requirements, which pertains to the BA.

The Business analysts are stakeholders. Their skills are focused on transforming the business process into a clear and stable system that will be transformed into a product. Something that is subsequent to the first issue of the Business Case. They are the beneficiaries of the strategy based on the correct priorities. These are some of the advantages offered:

An informal draft for planning to contact the “right” people at their ease (i.e. boss’ permission).
An outline to be used for defining the products’ features
The logic to be applied for choosing an architecture: (e.g. based on COTS, WEB etc)
The perception of product “quality”.

Conclusion

While the “stakeholder’s management” is a duty that shall be spread on to the whole project’s life, the understanding who the key people are, and then how their contribution can be obtained, during the hectic activities that form the project, is an essential part of the PM’s mission.

“The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives”.