The project´s stakeholders should be managed in a good and structured manner. The most important thing is to keep them sufficiently engaged and informed about what is happening in the project. A good way to start the cooperation is to arrange a stakeholder start-up meeting. This meeting should ideally be held at the beginning of all project phases, but if you must prioritize, it should at least be held one just after M1.

The meeting will define the scope of work for the next phase and necessary level of details to be performed by the customer. It is a good idea to go through the project assignment/mandate and business case in order to clarify project goals, identify important business drivers, identify critical success factors and define the main deliverables. The appropriate level of CVP implementation (Fit-To-Purpose) should also be defined for all involved stakeholders.

The Stakeholder start-up meeting is chaired by the project owner. Key stakeholders should participate. The meeting should be run in conjunction with the project kick-off at M1.

It is strongly recommended to review experiences from other projects as a preparation for the kick-off at M1. Such experiences should be discussed and aligned with important stakeholders.

Also see the templates regarding stakeholder analysis under Communication.

Documents