What Are Stakeholders?

What are stakeholders? Stakeholders are "individual and organizations that are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be affected as a result of the project execution or project completion" (Project Management Institute, 2004, pg 24, section 2.2). Everyone that touches this project is a stakeholder. We may also consider those that have influence over the projects outcome as a stakeholder. Another way we can describe stakeholders is "individuals or organizations who stand to gain or lose from the success or failure of a system" (Nuseibeh & Easterbrook, 2000).

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). For instance, some companies that have thousands of stockholders, which makes them stakeholders in the project have little influence and little interest in the projects the company is undertaking. Once we identify 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 understanding the stakeholders in the project, you can then determine how you deal with those stakeholders to satisfy their needs and desires for the outcome of the project. Those stakeholders that have high Influence and high Interest are the ones you will want to spend the most time with, those with low influence and low interest are the ones you will spend the least amount of time with. (Boutelle, 2004)

The stakeholders of project X include,
Myself the Project Manager
Nuclear scientists
Engineers
Technology professionals
Automated Mobile Defense System (AMDS) Stakeholders
U.S. Government
Staff at AMDS working with the project
U.S. Military division monitoring and maintaining this project
All U.S. Task Forces such as Homeland Security

References:

Boutelle, Jonathan, Published on 05/06/2004, "Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success" [Electronic Version] Retrieved on May 29, 2006 from http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/understanding_organizational_stakeholders_for_design_success

Project Management Institute, 2004, "Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition, (PMBOK Guide), Project Management Institute, Inc. Newtown Square, PA 19073

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