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Those roles include project sponsors, customers, team members, and of course,
you, the project manager.

Stakeholders

Have you ever heard the phrase “the stakes are high"? When we talk about
“stakes,” we are referring to the important parts of a business, situation, or project
that might be at risk if something goes wrong. To hold stake in a business,
situation, or project means you are invested in its success. There will oftenct. Each
group’s level of investment will differ based on how the outcome of the project
may impact them. Stakeholders are often divided into two groups: Primary
stakeholders, also known as key stakeholders, and secondary stakeholders. A
primary stakeholder is directly affected by the outcome of the project, while a
secondary stakeholder is indirectly affected by the outcome of the project.
Primary stakeholders usually include team members, senior leaders, and
customers. For example, imagine that you are a project manager for a construction
company that is commissioned to build out a new event space for a local catering
company. On this project, the owners of the catering company would be primary
stakeholders since they are paying for the project.
Another primary stakeholder could be the CEO of your construction company. If
the CEO likes to be directly involved with projects for local businesses like the
catering company, that would make them a primary stakeholder.
An example of a secondary stakeholder might be the project’s point of contact in
legal. While the project outcome might not affect them directly, the project itself
would impact their work when they process the contract. Each project will have a

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 different set of stakeholders, which is why it’s important for the project manager to
know who they are, what they need, and how to communicate with them.

Prioritizing stakeholders and generating

their buy-in
In this lesson, you are learning to complete a stakeholder analysis and explain its
significance. Let’s focus here on how to prioritize the various types of
stakeholders that can exist on a project, generate stakeholder buy-in, and manage
their expectations.

Conducting a stakeholder analysis

Stakeholders are an essential part of any project. A project manager’s ability to
balance stakeholder requirements, get their buy-in, and understand when and
how to involve them is key to successfully fulfilling a project.
It is key to keep stakeholders organized in order to understand when and how to
involve them at the right time. we introduced the stakeholder analysis, a useful
tool that project managers use to understand stakeholders’ needs and help
minimize hiccups during your project life cycle.

Let’s review the key steps in the stakeholder analysis:

1. Make a list of all the stakeholders the project impacts. When generating this
list, ask yourself: Who is invested in the project? Who is impacted by this
project? Who contributes to this project?

2. Determine the level of interest and influence for each stakeholder—this step
helps you determine who your key stakeholders are. The higher the level of
interest and influence, the more important it will be to prioritize their needs
throughout the project.

3. Assess stakeholders’ ability to participate and then find ways to involve them.
Various types of projects will yield various types of stakeholders—some will
be active stakeholders with more opinions and touchpoints and others will be
passive stakeholders, preferring only high-level updates and not involved in

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 the day-to-day. That said, just because a stakeholder does not participate as
often as others does not mean they are not important. There are lots of factors
that will play a role in determining a stakeholder’s ability to participate in a
project, like physical distance from the project and their existing workload.

Pro tip: You might want to form a steering committee during some projects. A
steering committee is a collection of key stakeholders who have a high level of
power and interest in a project. A steering committee can influence multiple
departments within the organization, which means that they have the potential to
release a greater number of resources to the project manager.

Visualizing your analysis

A power grid shows stakeholder interest in the project versus their influence over
the project. This four-quadrant tool helps project managers evaluate how to
manage their stakeholders. It is used to determine the appropriate level of
engagement required by the project team needed to gain the stakeholders’ trust
and buy-in. The upper half of the grid represents higher influence, and the lower
half of the grid represents lower influence. Meanwhile, the left half of the grid
represents lower interest, and the right half of the grid represents higher interest.
With that in mind, you'll find the upper left quadrant to be labeled "meets their
needs," the upper right quadrant "manage closely," the bottom left quadrant is
labeled "monitor," and the bottom right quadrant is labeled "show consideration."

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 Take the time at the start of the project to establish your stakeholder approach.
List the stakeholders and then place them into the appropriate places on the grid.
Being able to visualize their placement will help you manage communications and
expectations. Having a quick reference tool to drive your communication actions
will also allow you to have the ability to spend more time doing other tasks on your
project.
Pro tip: While these tools help organize information, they do not necessarily make
the difference between successful and unsuccessful stakeholder engagement.
What will make for successful stakeholder engagement is the project manager’s
ability to know their stakeholders’ motivations and inspirations. This takes time,
interpersonal skills, and insight into the organization’s internal political workings.
Remember, each project is different, and your project may need tweaks along the
way as you grow as a project manager. Making necessary changes means you are
doing something right. Just make sure to check in and ensure that you are well on
track, engaging your stakeholders successfully, and delivering on your project!

Generating stakeholder buy-in

Once you organize and assess your stakeholders, it is time to start making some
decisions on whose buy-in is absolutely necessary for success, whose
requirements deserve the most attention, and what level of communication each
stakeholder will require.

Gaining key stakeholder buy-in is essential to ensuring that your project is not
deprioritized or deprived of resources.

Tips for gaining key stakeholder buy-in include:

Clearly mapping the work of the project to the goals of the stakeholder.

Describing how the project aligns with the goals of the stakeholder's
department or team.

Listening to feedback from the stakeholder and finding ways to incorporate

their feedback into the project's charter where appropriate.

Manage your stakeholders’ expectations by presenting a realistic view of your

team’s abilities. Do not over-promise and under-deliver!

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 Building out a RACI chart(RACI MATRIX)
A RACI chart can be an extremely effective way to define project roles, give
direction to each team member and stakeholder, and ensure work gets done
efficiently. Having a RACI chart available throughout the duration of your project
as a quick visual can be invaluable. In this reading, we will cover the function of a
RACI chart and its components and explore how project managers use RACI
charts to define and document project roles and responsibilities.

Elements of a RACI chart

A RACI chart creates clear roles and gives direction to each team member and
stakeholder. Over your career, you may hear a RACI chart referred to as a
Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), RACI diagram, or RACI matrix. The
ultimate goal of this chart is to clarify each person’s role on your project.

First, let’s break down each of the roles people can be assigned:

R: Responsible: who gets the work done

A: Accountable: who makes sure the work is done

C: Consulted: who gives input or feedback on work

I: Informed: who needs to know the outcome

Note that RACI charts can be organized in different ways, depending on personal
preference, number of tasks being assigned, and number of people involved. In
the previous video, we showed you one RACI chart format. The template below
shows another way a typical RACI chart might be organized.
Let’s further examine each of the roles and how to determine which team member
should be assigned to which role.

Responsible
Individuals who are assigned the “responsible” role for a task are the ones who
are actually doing the work to complete the task. Every task needs at least one
responsible party. It’s a best practice to try to limit the number of team members
assigned to a task’s responsible role, but in some cases, you may have more than
one.

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 A couple of questions to ask yourself when determining which person or people
should be placed in the responsible role for a given task are:

What department does the work fall under?

Who will perform the work?

It is helpful to evaluate the people on your team to determine the role that suits
them. Remember that you may need to list roles rather than names, if some people
take on more than one role.

Let’s dig deeper into our example with Office Green. Our task is to develop price
points for the project, and the Financial Analyst will complete the work for this
task. Therefore, we will list “Financial Analyst” in the responsible role for this task
in the RACI chart.

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 Accountable
The “accountable” person is responsible for making sure the task gets done. It is
important to have only one individual accountable for each task. This helps clarify

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 ownership of the task. The accountable person ultimately has the authority to
approve the deliverable of the responsible party.
In order to determine who should be tagged as the accountable team member,
consider:

Who will delegate the task to be completed?

Who will review the work to determine if the task is complete?

You may encounter a situation where the responsible party is also accountable,
but where possible, it is helpful to separate these roles. Ensuring that
accountability is not shared ensures that there is no confusion on who the
ownership belongs to.
Continuing with our Office Green example, you have assigned the “accountable”
role to the Head of Finance. The Head of Finance has to make sure the project
stays in budget and makes a profit, so they have the ultimate authority over the
price points for the product. Therefore, they will need to approve the Financial
Analyst’s work on the task.

Consulted
Team members or stakeholders who are placed in the “consulted” role have useful
information to help complete the task. There is no maximum or minimum number
of people who can be assigned a “consulted” role, but it’s important that each
person has a reason for being there.

Here are a few ways you can help identify who is appropriate for the role:

Who will the task impact?

Who will have input or feedback for the responsible person to help the work
be completed?

Who are the subject matter experts (SMEs) for the task?

The consulted people will be in frequent, two-way communication with the

responsible party, so it is key to make sure that the right people are in this role to
help accomplish the task efficiently and correctly.
Back to the project at Office Green, we’ve got a “responsible” Financial Analyst
and an “accountable” Head of Finance. Who else would need to provide input on

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 the product’s price points? Whose decisions and feedback will directly affect the
task? The Director of Product will need to be consulted on the matter, as they
oversee all product offerings. This person will have information about potential
changes to the product and how these changes might affect price points.

Informed
Individuals who are identified as needing to be “informed” need to know the final
decisions that were made and when a task is completed. It is common to have
many people assigned to this category and for some team members to be
informed on most tasks. Team members or stakeholders here will not be asked for
feedback, so it is key to make sure people who are in this group only require
status updates and do not need to provide any direct feedback for the completion
of the effort.

Key questions to ask yourself in order to ensure that you have appropriately
captured individuals in the “informed” role are:

Who cares about this task’s completion?

Who will be affected by the outcome?

Now that you’ve determined who is responsible, accountable, and consulted on

the Office Green project task, it is time to determine who needs to be informed
about the task. Your Financial Analyst has set the price points with input from the
Director of Product, and the Head of Finance has approved. You will now need to
inform the Sales Team about the final price points, as they will need this
information to sell the product.
Pro tip: You could end up with a large number of team members and stakeholders
who are placed in the “informed” role. If so, make sure that you have a plan to
keep them informed that is not labor-intensive. Something as easy as view-only
access to your project plan or meeting notes could prevent you from having to
create separate communications along the way.

Key takeaway
The RACI chart is a valuable tool. It can help you define and document project
roles and responsibilities, give direction to each team member and stakeholder,
and ensure work gets done efficiently. A RACI chart can also help you analyze and

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 balance the workload of your team. While it may take many revisions to make sure
that your team members and stakeholders are being placed into the right roles in
your RACI chart, doing this work up front helps save time and prevent
miscommunications later on.

Getting the most out of a RACI chart

In the previous video, you learned how critical a RACI chart is for creating clear
roles and giving direction to each team member on a project. In this reading, we
will further explore the function and components of RACI charts and how to use
them to communicate responsibilities to project teams.

Definition and structure

Determining who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed on your
projects allows you to keep control of the stakeholders roles on your project.

Workload balance
Are there too many tasks assigned to one stakeholder? When you complete your
chart, it is a good idea to go back through and tally the number of Rs assigned to
each stakeholder. This can help you identify potentially overloading one team
member with work. Using a RACI chart to determine responsibility for tasks can
help mitigate single points of failure (known as creating silos, where the
knowledge and responsibility for a task falls on one person) and allow you, as the
project manager, to delegate tasks and avoid burnout. Maintaining workload
balance is a critical part of project management. It is easy to fall into the pattern of
relying on your top performers to keep the project moving forward. But this isn’t
always healthy for the project or your team. If you find that you don’t have the
right people to assign responsibilities to, take a step back and evaluate your team.

Put your RACI into practice

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 Once you have created your RACI chart, it is time to put it into practice. You will
first need to share your RACI chart with your sponsors and stakeholders to get
buy-in and sign-off. When you get stakeholder buy-in, you will be able to set clear
expectations for your team and ensure that everyone is aligned on their
responsibilities.

You can document your team and stakeholders’ acknowledgment of these

expectations through the project charter, meeting notes, and in the RACI chart
itself. Think back to a time when you were expected to do something you did not
agree with, or weren’t clear on. That disagreement or lack of clarity made it
difficult to do your best work, right? Getting buy-in and continually checking in
with your stakeholders and your team is the way to avoid this potential pitfall!
As you take the time to ensure that each task has an owner identified with the
appropriate level of engagement, you are streamlining your communication and
decision-making process over the life cycle of your project.

When should you use a RACI chart?

If you are wondering if you should use a RACI chart on your project, it is a good
idea to evaluate the complexity of the effort. For example, if you have a very small
project team with a small number of stakeholders, clearly defined roles, and a
short timeline, introducing a RACI chart could possibly slow down the project.
However, larger projects, or even projects that involve a large number of
stakeholders, could greatly benefit from a RACI chart. It is always a good idea to
work through the creation of a RACI chart and evaluate the outcome. Even if you
do not end up using the RACI chart, you will have a better understanding of the
project, and your effort will contribute to your project management experience
overall.

Why projects fail: Initiation missteps

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 You have been learning the necessary planning steps to take in order to set a
project up for success. But despite your best efforts, projects can still fail.
Sometimes the factors that lead to project failure are out of your control. The
technology to complete the project is unavailable, for example, or a stakeholder
decides to drastically change the goals of the project. However, there are factors
that can lead to failure that are more in your control, such as being unable to
complete the project deliverables within the agreed upon time or being unable to
fulfill the stakeholder’s vision for the project.

In this reading, we will explore a few key reasons why projects fail and examine
how missteps during the initiation phase can lead to project failure.

Unclear expectations
You may remember the questions you need to answer at the start of the initiation
phase of the project, including:

What is the end goal?

What are the expected deliverables and schedule?

What is the budget?

Who are the stakeholders?

Not taking the time at the beginning of a project to ask essential questions,
document decisions, and understand the true scope of the project may lead to
failure. After all, without directions, you can never reach your destination.

Unrealistic expectations
We all like to impress our managers, but sometimes, we accidentally agree to
unrealistic expectations and set our projects up for failure from the start. For
example, if a project is expected to take two weeks due to the level of detail and
effort required but we try to complete it in one week, we will not have the
resources available to meet the consolidated schedule. This will likely result in
quality issues. It’s important to understand the requirements of a project before
agreeing to any deadlines. As a best practice, don't commit to firm dates when
initiating the project to avoid setting unrealistic expectations. You will have more
information and will be able to better manage expectations in the planning phase.

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 Miscommunication
Clear communication is key. If information is not communicated in a timely
manner, does not include pertinent information (risks, decisions made, scope
changes, etc.), or is not sent to the correct stakeholders, then you may be setting
yourself up for failure. Conducting a stakeholder analysis and then utilizing a RACI
chart to understand which stakeholders should be kept informed or consulted is a
great start to creating an effective communication strategy.
As a project manager, you do not necessarily have to cater to everyone’s unique
communication styles, but you do have to set expectations about how
communication will occur. As you are kicking off a project, make sure you take
some time to understand the communication needs of your team and
stakeholders. Some people dislike emails and would prefer to have a phone
conversation, some prefer to have communication in writing, and some prefer
face-to-face meetings. A strong communication system incorporates all of these
methods. Set expectations for your communication approach early so that you,
your team members, and your stakeholders have a clear understanding of how
you will all communicate.

Lack of resources
Resources include your team members, budget, and materials. Unfortunately,
without proper planning, your resources can quickly be over-tasked or depleted.
Sometimes project managers don’t account for the fact that team members are
juggling multiple tasks and may not be able to devote the time necessary to
complete all of their assigned tasks correctly and on time. Or, project managers
may not realize that a specific skill set is required to complete certain tasks.
Ensuring that the right team members are available at the right time is crucial.
Another common error is to incorrectly calculate your project expenses. For
example, imagine you have a project budget of $10,000. If your project requires
$10,000 for materials and you also have to ship and install those materials, then
you will not have enough money to complete your project. Clarify your resource
needs and confirm their availability with leadership up front to avoid delays or
issues further along in the project.

Scope creep

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 The scope provides an overarching framework of what is and is not included in
the project’s work and deliverables. Defining the scope in the initiation phase
helps identify the resources needed, the cost associated with those resources,
and the schedule required to complete the work. Sometimes projects fail because
the scope of the project grows and impacts to the scope are not captured.

For example, imagine that you are given a project that originally includes three
deliverables. During the course of the project, a stakeholder requests that two
additional deliverables be included, but no changes are made to the schedule,
budget, or team members to reflect the impact of the increased number of
deliverables. As a project manager, when deliverables change, you have to make
sure that you are capturing the potential impact of those changes to the schedule,
budget, and quality. This is why it is so important to make sure that everything is
documented in the initiation phase. Have a plan for how to handle scope creep if it
occurs, and clarify who has the authority to approve scope changes.

Key takeaway
Taking the time to clarify expectations—particularly around communication
methods, resources available, and scope—during the initiation phase will increase
the chances of your project’s success. Even if you follow these best practices, you
may still encounter failure. Remember that in every failure, there is the opportunity
to learn, grow, and do better the next time.

Managing resources to get the job done

As we continue learning the tools and techniques that will help you succeed in
project management, let’s consider the importance of project resources. Project
resources are who and what you depend on to complete a project, including
budget, materials, and people. While each resource is a separate entity, they all
depend on one another—your team cannot do the work without materials, and you
cannot purchase materials without a budget. In this reading, we will discuss some
key project resources and tips for managing them.

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 Budget
Have you ever created a budget for yourself or your family? If you have, you know
that a budget includes a wide variety of expenses. For example, a monthly
personal budget can contain items that include anything from food to
transportation costs to rent. With only a certain amount of funding to cover each
expense, it is important to closely monitor your spending to avoid going over
budget. If you go over in one category of your budget, you will impact the others
and will need to make adjustments. As a project manager, you will take the same
general approach with your project budget.
Common aspects of your project budget will include:

Team: the cost of the people performing the work

Services: any outside vendors helping your project

Materials: any tangible items purchased to complete the project

Throughout your project management career, you will encounter various types of
projects with a wide range of budgets. Some budgets will have no margin for
error, whereas other budgets may be more flexible. Regardless of this variability,
budget issues will inevitably arise, so it is important to make sure that the budget
is aligned with the project scope and the stakeholders’ asks.

People
People are a vital resource on your project; you cannot complete your project on
your own! You will need to rely on a strong team of people with a variety of skill
sets and specialties to get the job done. As a project manager, make sure that you
have commitment and buy-in on the number of hours it will take for your resources
to complete their tasks. Additionally, you will find the best partners on a project
are people who are aligned to the goals of the project or who are most interested
in the project's work.

Materials
Materials can be different on every project. For example, if you were working on
an IT project, materials could include hard drives and computers to handle the
coding efforts. You can also have materials that are intangible. For example, on the

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 same IT project, online storage, software programs, or employee training may also
be considered materials. It is important to account for any and all potential
materials in order to execute a successful project with the right people and within
budget.

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