Business Value, Stakeholder Management and the new PMBOK

I read the new PMBOK 5^th edition last week and noted there were two significant changes:

• More emphasis on understanding the project in context of the overall business value, objectives, organizational strategy, programs and portfolios.
• Creation of a 10^th Project Management Knowledge Area called Stakeholder Management.

I was very happy to see the emphasis on business value. In the Infogrinder process, the first questions we ask ourselves and clients before starting any project are:

• What is the desired outcome? (What is the objective?)
• What is the value that this project provides?  (Why are we doing this in the first place, and is it worth spending time and money on?)
• Is this project part of a bigger project? (How does this project fit into the bigger picture?)

We consider these questions so critically fundamental that they are the core to our approach. We ask them continuously throughout the project, and this is key to staying focused on what matters most. For example, if circumstances change and a project is no longer delivering value, why continue to spend time and money on it?

As for Stakeholder Management, you know from my previous blogs that I feel strongly about the importance of managing stakeholders effectively in order to keep good projects from going bad. Managing stakeholders is all about identifying who they are, what potential impact they may have on the project, understanding and managing expectations, and establishing a two-way flow of communication to ensure the right information gets to the right people at the right time.

PMI considers stakeholder management important enough to warrant a separate knowledge area in PMBOK.  Research continues to reveal high project failure rates, often due to the make-or-break nature of managing and engaging stakeholders.

We’ve seen the pitfalls and the paths to prevention, and agree with PMI’s assessment. Today’s portfolio, program and project management practitioners must improve stakeholder management skills in order to succeed.