PMP Exam Day Two Notes

Stakeholder Concepts & Definitions

• Stakeholder = anyone impacted by the project, its decisions or its activities – this includes individuals, groups, or organizations whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by the project, its outcomes, or its completion. This impact can be direct (e.g., team members) or indirect (e.g., community members benefiting from a new public service). On international work, this could potentially involve billions.

• Five broad "I’s" used to remember stakeholder categories:

  • Interested: Those who have a curiosity or general concern about the project's success or failure, even if not directly involved or influenced.

  • Involved: Individuals or groups directly participating in the project work, such as team members, project managers, and functional managers.

  • Influencing / with Influence dependencies: Those who can exert power or pressure over the project, its scope, resource allocation, or success, or whose actions the project depends on (e.g., senior management, regulatory bodies, key suppliers).

  • Impacted: Individuals or groups directly or indirectly affected by the project's output, process, or final product (e.g., end-users, customers, operations staff, the public).

  • Interdependencies (people on whom the project depends): Crucial individuals or groups whose input, approval, or cooperation is vital for the project's progression and successful delivery (e.g., subject matter experts, legal counsel, specific vendors).

• Not all stakeholders carry equal weight within a project; therefore, continual prioritization is required to effectively manage their expectations, engagement, and power. Prioritization helps allocate limited resources (time, communication efforts) to the most critical stakeholders.

• Key artifacts and where they live:

  • Business Case → describes why the project should exist, outlining the problem, opportunities, strategic alignment, and often includes a preliminary cost-benefit analysis, return on investment (ROI), or net present value (NPV) to justify the investment.

  • Benefits-Management Plan → quantifies strategic and financial benefits (e.g., increased revenue, reduced costs, improved market share, enhanced customer satisfaction) and details how these benefits will be measured, tracked, and ultimately realized throughout and beyond the project lifecycle.

  • Project Charter → formally authorises work to begin, names the Project Manager (PM), grants the PM authority to apply organizational resources to project activities, and lists high-level scope, schedule, cost, and initial risks. It serves as a foundational document for the project.

  • Stakeholder Register → a living, dynamic catalogue of every identified stakeholder. It typically includes public columns (name, role, organization, contact info) and private columns for sensitive information (e.g., influence level, interest, potential resistance, engagement strategy, classified notes).

  • Stakeholder Engagement Plan (SEP) → details the strategies and actions required to effectively engage stakeholders based on their needs, interests, and potential impact. It outlines how to involve them, from unaware to leading engagement levels.

  • Communications-Management Plan (CMP) → specifies the communication channels, frequency, formats, and content for all project communications. It is driven by the SEP, ensuring that communication strategies align with stakeholder engagement needs and preferences, and often includes escalation pathways.

• Vocabulary differs by organisation – never assume terms (e.g., “business case” vs “manifesto”, “charter” vs “contract” or “statement of work”). Always clarify terminology at the outset of any project or engagement.

Stakeholder Identification & Analysis Tools

• Data-gathering techniques are essential for comprehensive stakeholder identification and understanding their needs and expectations:

  • Interviews: One-on-one discussions to gather detailed qualitative information and build rapport.

  • Brainstorming: Group sessions to rapidly identify a broad range of potential stakeholders.

  • Questionnaires/Surveys: Efficient for collecting quantitative data from a large number of stakeholders.

  • Lessons-learned: Reviewing past project documentation to identify common stakeholder types and engagement challenges.

  • Document review: Analyzing project-related documentation (e.g., contracts, organizational charts, strategic plans) to identify formal stakeholders.

• Analysis models provide structured ways to categorize and understand stakeholder influence and importance:

  • Power vs Interest grid (also Power-Influence, Impact-Influence): Maps stakeholders based on their level of authority/power and their inclination/concern regarding the project. This helps in formulating engagement strategies:

  • High Power + High Interest → "Key Players / Manage Closely": Engage frequently, involve in key decisions, ensure their needs are met. These are critical for project success.

  • High Power + Low Interest → "Keep Satisfied (e.g., Finance, Legal)": Keep them updated, address their concerns proactively, ensure their specific requirements (e.g., budget approvals, legal compliance) are met without over-communicating.

  • Low Power + High Interest → "Keep Informed (users, customers)": Provide regular updates and ensure their perspectives are heard, as they are often direct beneficiaries or affected parties.

  • Low Power + Low Interest → "Monitor Only": Keep an eye on them, but do not dedicate excessive resources. Be aware that stakeholders can migrate between quadrants as the project progresses or their interest/power changes.

  • Salience Model (Power, Legitimacy, Urgency – Venn diagram): Categorizes stakeholders based on three attributes: Power (ability to influence), Legitimacy (authority or legal standing), and Urgency (need for immediate attention). The intersection of these attributes identifies stakeholder priority, with triple-overlap (power, legitimacy, urgency) indicating the most critical stakeholders requiring immediate and close attention.

  • Direction-of-Influence matrix: Categorizes stakeholders based on their influence direction relative to the project team and its objectives:

  • Upward: Senior management, sponsors, governance bodies.

  • Downward: Project team, suppliers, contractors.

  • Outward: Customers, vendors, government agencies, external organizations.

  • Sideways: Peers of the project manager, other project managers, functional managers whose departments are not directly impacted but provide resources or support.

  • Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix (SEAM): Compares the current engagement level of stakeholders with the desired engagement level for project success. Engagement levels typically include:

  • Unaware: Unaware of the project and its potential impacts.

  • Resistant: Aware of the project but resistant to change.

  • Neutral: Aware but neither supportive nor resistant.

  • Supportive: Aware and supportive of the project.

  • Leading: Actively engaged in ensuring project success.
    This matrix helps tailor specific strategies to move stakeholders from their current to desired states.

Stakeholder Engagement & Communication Planning

• The process is an iterative cycle: Identify → Analyze → Plan Engagement → Manage Engagement → Monitor & Adjust. This cycle is continuous because stakeholders' needs, interests, power, and engagement levels can change throughout the project lifecycle.

• SEP & CMP may sometimes be merged, especially in smaller projects or organizations with less formal processes, but academically remain distinct knowledge areas. The SEP focuses on who needs what level of engagement, why, and how to achieve it, while the CMP details what, when, where, and how information will be communicated.

• Ongoing monitoring is crucial to uncover new stakeholders, identify those no longer relevant, detect shifts in attitudes or influence, and reassess engagement strategies. This can happen through informal conversations, regular meetings, or formal reviews.

• Ethical note: Sensitive information (e.g., "Minister is corrupt," personal financial data, confidential health information) belongs strictly in the private columns of the Stakeholder Register and should not be shared in public or widely accessible project documents. Strict confidentiality and data protection measures must be applied.

Communication Theory & Channels

• The Sender-Receiver model describes the basic process of communication: Encode → Transmit → Decode → Acknowledge → Feedback. This process is often impacted by noise (anything interfering with the message, e.g., distractions, technical issues) and filters (personal biases, cultural differences, language barriers, emotional states, technical limitations) which can distort the message.

• Communication modes determine how information flows:

  • Push: Information is sent to recipients without expecting immediate feedback (e.g., email, newsletters, intranet bulletins, press releases). Effective for broad dissemination but offers limited control over understanding.

  • Pull: Recipients access information when needed, typically from shared repositories (e.g., internal websites, dashboards, knowledge bases, collaboration platforms like Confluence or SharePoint). Useful for large audiences but requires recipients to actively seek information.

  • Interactive: Allows for two-way exchange and immediate feedback (e.g., meetings, chat, video conferencing, phone calls). Best for complex or sensitive topics, building consensus, and conflict resolution.

• Depth vs Breadth matrix helps choose the appropriate communication channel:

  • Face-to-face communication offers high depth (richness of cues like body language, tone) but low breadth (limited number of simultaneous participants).

  • A web post offers low depth but high breadth (reaches a wide audience).
    The choice depends on the message's complexity, sensitivity, and required level of interaction.

• Factors driving channel choice include urgency (e.g., critical issues need interactive channels), formality (e.g., legal documents need formal channels), confidentiality (sensitive data requires secure channels), language, and culture (communication styles vary significantly across cultures).

• Response-time expectations (Service Level Agreements - SLAs) should be explicitly set and communicated (e.g., email response within 24 hours, instant message response within 60 minutes within the same time zone, critical alerts within 1 hour).

Key Formulas & Numerical References

• Number of communication channels: As the number of project stakeholders (n) increases, the potential communication channels increase exponentially:

  ext{Channels}={n(n-1)}{2} This formula reflects the number of unique interactions possible among stakeholders, emphasizing the importance of clear communication strategies as project size grows. Additionally, it's crucial to track these channels to identify bottlenecks and optimize communication flows, ensuring that all stakeholders receive timely updates and feedback.

• Team size findings: Research indicates that face-to-face discussion quality tends to drop significantly beyond approximately 10 people (and roughly 5 virtually) due to challenges in active participation, focus, and managing diverse inputs.

Building Relationships & Soft Skills

• Effective relationship-building techniques are crucial for fostering trust and collaboration:

  • Social media research: Understand stakeholders' professional interests or public contributions (used respectfully).

  • Mirroring language: Adapting your communication style to match the stakeholder's for better rapport.

  • Knowing hobbies/kids/sports: Personalizing interactions (within professional boundaries).

  • Coffee preferences: Small gestures that show you pay attention.
    These foster trust and psychological safety, essential for open communication and conflict resolution.

• Respect cultural limits & code-of-conduct: Be aware of and abide by organizational policies (e.g., U.S. federal gift cap ≈ $$25), and cultural norms regarding personal space, directness, and formality to avoid misunderstandings.

• Active listening & emotional intelligence are paramount. Active listening involves fully concentrating on what is being said, both verbally and non-verbally, and providing feedback to confirm understanding. Emotional intelligence enables understanding and managing one's own emotions, as well as recognizing and influencing the emotions of others, which is vital for navigating complex stakeholder dynamics.

Team Dynamics & Development

• The Tuckman model describes the five stages of team development:

  • Forming: Team members meet, learn about the project, and establish initial roles. Characterized by politeness and uncertainty.

  • Storming: Conflict and competition emerge as individuals assert their personalities and ideas. Approximately 50% of teams struggle and potentially dissolve at this stage, as roles and norms are challenged.

  • Norming: Team members develop cohesion, establish clear roles, and agree on working processes and norms. Conflicts are resolved, and a sense of shared commitment emerges.

  • Performing: The team operates with high efficiency, interdependence, and trust, effectively achieving goals. Only 10–30% of teams consistently reach this highly productive stage.

  • Adjourning: The team completes its activities and disbands, often involving formal recognition and debriefing.

• Reorganizations or significant member turnover reset the cycle for a team, often sending them back to the forming or storming stage (e.g., U.S. political appointee churn of approximately 18 months can constantly re-form teams).

• Team Norms / Charters are agreements created by the team to define how they will work together:

  • Meeting etiquette: Rules for participation, punctuality, agenda adherence.

  • Working hours: Expectations for availability and response times.

  • Decision making: How decisions will be made (e.g., consensus, majority vote, delegated).

  • Conflict resolution: Agreed-upon methods for addressing disagreements constructively.

  • Tools: Preferred collaboration and communication tools.
    These are less formal than a project charter and are typically co-created by the team, which significantly boosts buy-in and accountability for their practical application.

Team Structures, Roles & Leadership Styles

• I-shaped vs T-shaped individuals:

  • I-shaped: Deep specialists in one area, often found in traditional, hierarchical structures.

  • T-shaped: Possess deep expertise in one area (the vertical bar) coupled with breadth of knowledge and skills across multiple disciplines (the horizontal bar). Agile environments strongly favor T-shaped individuals for their versatility, ability to collaborate across functions, and adaptability to changing priorities.

• Servant Leadership: A leadership philosophy where the leader's primary focus is on serving and empowering the team's success, rather than exerting personal authority. This involves removing impediments, coaching, mentoring, and fostering a self-organizing environment. This style is typical of a Scrum Master or Agile Coach.

• Centralized leadership (decisions flow from a single authority) vs Distributed leadership (decision-making authority is shared across team members or subgroups). High-performing agile teams tend to gravitate towards distributed leadership, promoting greater autonomy, ownership, and faster decision-making within the team.

Virtual vs Co-Located Teams

• Virtual-team challenges include:

  • Time zones: Managing communication and meeting schedules across different geographical locations.

  • Technology access/literacy: Ensuring all members have reliable internet, necessary software, and the skills to use collaboration tools, addressing the potential for a digital divide.

  • Missing non-verbal cues: Body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice are harder to interpret in virtual settings, leading to potential miscommunications.

  • Engagement measurement: It can be more challenging to gauge participation, morale, and potential disengagement when interactions are not face-to-face.

• Effective strategies for virtual teams:

  • Early video meet-and-greet: Facilitates initial rapport-building and helps humanize team members before daily work begins.

  • Periodic face-to-face meetings: Where budget and logistics allow, occasional in-person gatherings can significantly strengthen team bonds and understanding.

  • Clear rules of engagement: Define explicit guidelines for time-zone fairness (e.g., rotating meeting times), single-speaker etiquette in virtual calls, and response SLAs for different communication channels.

  • Intentional team-building activities: Implement virtual social events,