Selling to Stakeholders

In order to determine the important of the stakeholders in the project, we first must identify their influence in the project along with their interest in the project. (Boutelle, 2004). Before you can sell your idea to the stakeholders we first must understand how much they can influence they have over the project.

Once we can understand the influence of the stakeholders, we can put them into one of four categories. (Boutelle, 2004).
1.
High Influence, High Interest
2.
Low Influence, High Interest
3.
High Influence, Low Interest
4.
Low Influence, Low Interest

By identifying the stakeholders influence over the project we then can take advantage of their resistance. No matter what your role is in an organization, it requires you to sell your ideas to management. You sell your idea though Change Management.

"The implementation of meaningful improvement in an organization, requires answering three questions: what to change, to what to change to, and how to make the change happen." (Focused Performance, 2006) Once we understand what to change, we can then focus on selling these ideas to the Stakeholders of the project and finding out what their resistances are to the project.

Resistance to change can be understood in terms of a series of six layers that consistently and regularly appear.
1.
Lack of agreement on the problem (Patrick, 2001)
2.
Lack of agreement on a possible direction for a solution (Patrick, 2001)
3.
Lack of agreement that the solution will truly address the problem (Patrick, 2001)
4.
Concern that the solution will lead to new undesirable side effects (Patrick, 2001)
5.
Lack of a clear path around obstacles blocking the solution
6.
Lack of follow-through even after agreement to proceed with the solution (Patrick, 2001)
THE STAKEHOLDERS
The Engineers and Technologists can be identified as the stakeholders of the project, "who stand to gain or lose from the success or failure of a system" (Nuseibeh & Easterbrook, 2000). These stakeholders, which we looked at earlier need to be sold on the idea of Project X. To start the idea of selling the idea of Project X to the stakeholders I would first find out their objections of the project and "peel away" their resistances to the project. I would also go over aspects of the project that they would stand to gain as a result of the project. This could include years of work, recognition of their accomplishments, and/or exclusive patented information. Given the nature of this project, it would also give them an opportunity to defend their country and something both the stakeholders and their families can be proud of.

References:

Boutelle, Jonathan, Published on 05/06/2004, "Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success" [Electronic Version] Retrieved on June 18, 2006 from http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/understanding_organizational_stakeholders_for_design_success

Focused Performance, 2006, "Stakeholder Focus Change Management" [Electronic Version] Retrieved on June 18, 2006 from http://www.focusedperformance.com/stakefocus.html

Francis S. "Frank" Patrick, Dallas, May, 2001, "Taking Advantage of Resistance to Change (and the TOC Thinking Processes) to Improve Improvements", [Electronic Version] Retrieved on June 18, 2006 from http://www.focusedperformance.com/articles/resistance.html

Nuseibeh and Easterbrook. 2000. Requirements Engineering: A Roadmap. ICSE-Future of SE Track.