Reference no: EM133450519

Stakeholder Analysis

As noted above, Acme Company, your employer, has made delivering projects more efficiently and effectively one of its strategic priorities over the past couple of years. Prior to a couple of years ago, they talked about projects as a priority but realized they were distributing the project management role to many functional leads like accountants, IT developers, product managers, research managers, and a range of other functionally oriented titles. Ms. Jackson realized that most of the company's work was really project work, and they have sought to become a more project-oriented organization by assigning project managers, who had received formal training, to lead these projects.

Realizing the importance of becoming a more mature project oriented organization, your CEO, Ms. Jackson, charged you with creating a business case for whether or not your company should invest in the expertise and training necessary to adopt a more mature project management approach. Your company's Board of Directors, who has a high level of influence and interest in this project, has approved the business case and the charter, and you are now charged by Ms. Jackson with creating an initial Stakeholder Analysis. Upon doing a little research about current project management practices in the organization, you discover that your company already has two really standout project professionals who have been underutilized: Stephanie Smith and Marcus Lopez. Ms. Smith recently completed a Master's degree in Project Management, which greatly enhanced her ability to perform, while Mr. Lopez, who only joined the company last year, is veteran project manager who is certified as a project management professional (PMP®). Individually, they have outperformed their counterparts in the organization by an average of 8 percent in terms of efficiency and use of resources. Initially, you thought the best route would be to hire Ms. Xin to perform the training and implementation consulting, but now you think you may have the internal talent that could be used. So in chartering the project, you want to perform a detailed stakeholder analysis to ensure that you understand all the various stakeholders and can develop a strong communication plan. Present Situation: As the Board of Directors has approved the business case your focus will be creating a stakeholder analysis to facilitate the development of a communication plan. Based on a conversation with the CEO, you will provide one day of classroom training each week for eight weeks, which is a total of eight days of classroom instruction.

You will use space and resources (technology, classroom space, etc.), so there is direct cost associated with the location where the training will be held.1 This is the charge of your project: to implement a training program for project based workers (initially 40 persons) within your organization at a direct cost of $40,000 for the training portion of the project. This is the scope that you are currently chartering. Your first order of business is to develop the Stakeholder Analysis. Stephanie and Marcus would act as co-instructors, as they have the most project management experience. During the eight weeks that the class is running, they will be devoting no more than 50% of their time teaching the class, preparing for instruction, as well as, providing coaching to various colleagues. In order to be prepared to deliver the instruction, they will need to spend one week at a 'training the trainer' seminar. You believe Stephanie and Marcus will be supportive of the project. Outsource Option: Alternatively, your team can recommend to hire an external trainer who is very experienced with the PM model that your company is adopting. As part of your contract with her, she will provide the one day a week classroom instruction for the eight weeks, and she will also provide an additional day of coaching each week on-site. Her fee is priced at $17,500. Even though you would be using an external trainer, Marcus and Stephanie would still need to devote roughly 25% of their time over the eight weeks to support the trainer and the project, so there is also cost associated with them in this model, as well, which you will need to account for.

You believe if you outsource the function, that Stephanie and Marcus may not be supporters. These are the two options for you to consider. Regardless of the option selected, you have been charged with having the training completed prior to the end of this year, so that the new processes can have a fresh implementation in the coming year. As with any case, not all questions are directly answered, which is very similar to the realities of real world projects, therefore, you will need to use good judgment and make reasonable assumptions, reading between the lines to find those logical connections. Finally, a special note about the stakeholder analysis. Fill the the stakeholder register taking into account the stakeholders listed throughout the entirety of this case study and any additional information you included with your business case.

You will have to make certain assumptions to complete this, as you will not have complete information for all stakeholders, and this is often true for projects at this point. You would continue to refine and sharpen this analysis throughout the project, so make reasonable assumptions when you don't have complete information.