Using Time to manage Risks associated with Stakeholders

Often, in my project management experience, I see that people miss engaging with the required stakeholders proactively to deal with risks. When stakeholders have not engaged appropriately, then, risks go uncontrolled making it impossible to mitigate them. Based on my experience, I see three types of stakeholders that need a good project manager must identify to proactively manage.

1. Too much engaged to the extent that they suck up all the oxygen in the team. They knowingly or unknowingly give the indication to the team that their ways are the common-sense way and everything else is almost wrong. 
2. Missing in Action stakeholders are too busy never to be around but when decisions are taken without them, they appear immediately. They are the constant speed breakers, breeding distrust and sometimes fear.
3. Ambiguous stakeholders who are in between these two above extremes can never figure out what they want, changing the priorities repeatedly making it difficult for the team to progress or slowdown. 

All these three types of stakeholders bring several types of risks - business, technical, and people among the many risks. The most important thing is to "Taking Initiative Managing Energy" that I call TIME management. This energy can be translated into how we manage "expectations". This is the reason why the project management discipline uses engagement for "stakeholder engagement" but management for other areas like knowledge areas like "Scope Management", "Schedule Management", etc. When you look at prioritization, it is all about taking initiative managing energy!

Consequently, while principles like start list, wish list and stop list exist that have been further enhanced by MoSCoW principles like (Must, Should, Could, and Won't) to prioritize requests, tasks, features, etc., TIME management considers a few simple things that anyone can do manage the stakeholders. These are asking a few questions like the following to set the expectations with the stakeholders.

1. Is this required? Particularly when #1 and #3 types of stakeholders are involved, determining the customer or business value of any proposed technique would take these discussions far along in avoiding tangential discussions and focusing on value-added work. Including timeboxing principles such as a definite amount of time for every actionable outcome from every agenda item can further keep the focus and remove other discussions to the parking lot.
2. Can you help me solve this, please? This approach can be used in all the three types of stakeholders. By setting one-on-one discussions with the stakeholder to mention how their values are important but how their continued presence is eliminating any creativity from the team due to their inclination to agree with the stakeholder's views or long absences taking any timely decision making away from the team can take the stakeholder management very productive. 
3. What's the ROI? Particularly in the stakeholder #3 situation, refocusing on the efforts versus cost/benefits can bring a distinct focus back to the project's objectives. Refocusing on the opportunity costs due to the cost of the meeting in discussing features that may not be a value add unless the stakeholder can unambiguously quantify will require the stakeholder to think of the Pareto principle and focus on "DONE"!

In the end, engaging stakeholders is an art that any project manager must spend time on. Regardless of how well one is, without a kaizen attitude towards continuous improvement, such arts of engaging stakeholders depreciate exponentially with time. So, use TIME to manage risks associated with stakeholder engagement. 

What other thoughts do you have in engaging stakeholders productively? Please share/comment. 

RACI Errors: Impact on Project Integration Management

In developing a good project integration management, it is critical to understand the role of responsibility assignment matrix. The goal of project management primarily is to deliver results through other people. This involves a clear role and responsibility for every work package or function that will play a critical role in project delivery. One such responsibility assignment matrix is the RACI.

I have often seen RACI filled incorrectly and have blogged (Rajagopalan, 2014). However, I would like to discuss the following two issues further as they have a relationship on other aspects of project management knowledge areas.

1.  Mixed roles with "A" and "R": When a person or function is marked with both these roles, then this may introduce the risk of project schedule slip. If the individual responsible for doing the function fails to perform, then typically the accountable person will monitor the slip and ensure that the work is getting done. Alternatively, if the work is not completed satisfactorily, the accountable person shares the onus to check on the quality and the cost of poor delivery. However, if the "R" person also is the "A" person, then the latter will not put any pressure on the former because they are both the same. This impacts risk, time, cost, and quality. Similar challenges can be seen with "R" and "C" or "I" overlap.

2. Too may "A"s: If two people are accountable, then there are two types of problems. The first is the blindness game each "A" role plays thinking that the other role will keep an eye in ensuring the task is completed. When this task fails to be done, the blindness game becomes the blame game reasoning with the "I thought you would have done it." This introduces project delays that may impact time and introduces challenges with procurement. The second issue is the team gets conflicting directions from each "A" person leaving the team to get caught between power plays. The resulting team dynamics may lead to HR and stakeholder challenges.  Furthermore, these issues may impact other areas of project management.

There are several symptoms that a proper RACI may resolve for the project manager to proactively address. But unless a project manager has a good understanding of RACI, the symptoms deteriorate leading to major problems requiring surgical intervention from executive management.  The project manager can avoid these strategically by planning to succeed with end in mind. 

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2014). RACI: Errors and Implications in building the right one. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/07/raci-errors-and-implications-in.html