At Agilemodelling Scott W. Ambler describes stakeholders as:
My definition of a project stakeholder is anyone who is a direct user, indirect user, manager of users, senior manager, operations staff member, the "gold owner" who funds the project, support (help desk) staff member, auditors, your program/portfolio manager, developers working on other systems that integrate or interact with the one under development, or maintenance professionals potentially affected by the development and/or deployment of a software project.
The author explicitly does not include the developers working on the project. In my humble opinion, a right decision.
My problem with this definition is that it is not a definition, it is a list. My definition would be:
Someone is a stakeholder if that person has an interest in the result of the project.
Note that this definition does not say that the stakeholder has an interest in the project. That would make everyone involved in the project a stakeholder. But that would make the project an aim in itself.
This definition also transcends the terms of software development. It can be applied to any project in any branch.
Stakeholders are important during the project process, because they:
* In the conception phase, define the scope of the project (they define the requested features list)
* During the elaboration phase, stakeholders have to agree that the current vision can be achieved if the current plan is executed
* During both elaboration phase and during the construction phase, the stakeholders need to guard the agreed balance of features
* At the end of the construction phase, the stakeholders have to say if they are ready to move to the transition phase.
* In all phases, stakeholders are essential for analists as a source of information.
Stakeholders typically will have to guard their own interest. Depending in the project management organization choosen, a project board may be
formed where they meet and discuss the priorities of the project.
Examples of stakeholders are:
* The funder of the project. Often there is one manager paying for the project. Sometimes there is more than one organization or department that funds a project. Conflicts between these parties should not drip down into the project. The project board should balance te interests by having the stakeholders agree on the scope through the adoption of a Requested Features List.
* Users. But be aware: "The user" does not exist. More than one department will be involved. More than one type of user will be involved. If there are large differences, they will be more than one stakeholder.
* IT staff who will have to work with the software after delivery. Examples are maintenance personel, helpdesk, dba-ers
Stakeholders will often be represented by people. The funder of the project will often send someone else to represent his interests, for example his sale manager or his CFO.
The users may be represented by several people, depending on the size of the users group and the diversity of their roles.
The Getronics Delivery Process, a company based implementation, says "Assign one or more staff members to perform this role only" before proceeding to combine this role with several others. The decision to assign staff members instead of line personel is a doubtful one.
There are several types of Stakeholders, and several roles. Ons distiguishment which is important to make is that some Stakeholders are Actors, while others are not. For example, a student who will use the Course Registration System to sign up for a course is both a Stakeholder and an Actor. The university director who finances the realization of a Course Registration System will be a Stakeholder, but probably not an Actor, unless he also lectures.
At Changing minds.org the authors view a short list of roles:
- Sponsors
- Targets
- Others affected
- Partners
The first group they distiguish, the Sponsors, is a very important one.
In the past 2 decades there have been several research projects into stakeholder analysis. Important work has been done by:
- Mitchell, Agle et al. 1997. They identify Stakeholders based on 3 properties: power, legitimacy and urgency.
- Fletcher, Guthrie et al. 2003
- Turner, Kristoffer and Thurloway, 2002
- Ronald K. Mitchell, Bradley R. Agle and Donna J. Wood, 2002
Stakeholders can be classified in several ways. According to wikipedia, some of the commonly used 'dimensions' include:
- Power (high, medium, low)
- Support (positive, neutral, negative)
- Influence (high or low)
- Interest (high or low)
- Attitude (supportive or obstructive)
No comments:
Post a Comment