Managing Stakeholders and Scope in IT Projects

"Get up front." That is what General George Patton wanted when his officers needed to tell him something. He wanted direct, simple engagement with no hesitation and no wasted time, and as a result his officers were never in any doubt about what he wanted. One of them, Porter Williamson, wrote that he still felt he served with Patton long afterward.

You do not need that depth of understanding with your project stakeholders, but you do need a very clear picture of what they want, and you need to give them exactly what they need. Managing stakeholders and scope well comes down to three things: communicate with precision, stay responsive to shifting targets, and plan with enough flexibility to absorb change.

Communicate like an elevator pitch

To guarantee success, give stakeholders accurate data about deliverables and progress, refined and focused as much as possible. Do not waffle or waste their time. Give them solid facts and metrics, clearly articulated, so they understand where the team is and how it aligns with the project charter.

Treat sponsor updates like an elevator pitch: brief, informative, and to the point. Reports and presentations should demonstrate clearly what the team has accomplished, not just what is going wrong.

• Be on point when reporting progress to the sponsor.
• Show the stakeholder what the team has accomplished, not only the problems.
• Give a realistic picture of where the project stands, ideally with a concrete sample.
• Engage the sponsor to help clarify priorities and direction.

If the project produces something tangible, a piece of software or a set of materials, put a sample in the sponsor's hands. Making success visible increases their trust far more than a status slide does.

Stay on the stakeholder's radar, for the right reasons

In 1201, a warrior shot and killed Genghis Khan's horse. When Khan demanded to know who did it, the warrior boldly took credit. Khan rewarded the audacity by making him a general and renaming him Jebe, meaning arrow. The lesson for project managers is about aim and visibility.

Stakeholders rarely have only one project in motion. They are constantly analyzing progress against moving targets, and if you are not careful you will spend more time responding to their concerns than managing your project. The best way to stay off their radar in a bad way is to put yourself on it in a good way, with results that respond to change.

• Establish clear goals and objectives from the start.
• Reevaluate those objectives in a controlled, organized process rather than reacting to every shift.
• Do not take on too much at once.
• Regularly check how your team's efforts align with stakeholder goals.

By working in small task iterations, teams show quicker results, minimize the productivity lost to wrong turns, and raise the quality of their work. Objectives may change, but they always need to be understood so the team stays on target.

Have direction, but do not over-plan

In 1970s Japan, Taiichi Ohno pioneered just-in-time manufacturing at Toyota, minimizing waste by producing precisely to demand rather than building elaborate stockpiles. Project planning benefits from the same instinct. Traditional IT project management emphasized detailed, lockstep planning, but the better approach is usually a balance of upfront planning and agile flexibility.

You still need to plan, just not always at the same level of detail. Planning can be refined while parts of the project are already in execution. It helps to write a charter that captures the end goal and a clear vision of what success looks like.

• A detailed plan at the outset reduces missteps and risk, but too much detail is wasted effort, because early plans rest on abstract reasoning and are bound to change.
• Anchor the charter in high-level objectives that get clarified as the work proceeds.
• Plan just enough to get started, and avoid drafting overly detailed execution plans up front.

The level of planning should match the work. In software development, minimal planning is sometimes appropriate. But IT infrastructure and application implementation projects involve demanding logistics, ordering equipment, for example, where some upfront preparation is essential. Buying the wrong device is costly, shifts your goals, wastes time, and drags the rest of the project down.

The danger is designing a detailed plan and then sticking to it too closely without reflecting on scope. Always have a vision, but stay adaptable. Create a plan that provides a clear direction, then execute with a methodology that anticipates change.

The common thread

Communicating clearly, staying responsive, and planning flexibly are three expressions of the same discipline: keeping the project aligned with what stakeholders actually need as that need evolves. A hybrid methodology, waterfall for planning and agile for execution, gives teams the structure to do this while staying adaptable. Every IT project is unique, but that balance between planning and adaptability is what keeps stakeholders satisfied and projects on target.