Stakeholder Roles and Influence in IT Project Management (MGT501)

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of stakeholders in Information Technology (IT) project management. It begins with an executive summary highlighting the importance of understanding stakeholder roles for successful IT projects. The introduction defines IT project management and emphasizes the significance of stakeholders in software development. The report then details the five main types of stakeholders: project managers, project teams, project sponsors, executive project sponsors, and project analysts, explaining their individual roles and responsibilities. It differentiates between internal and external stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, and the government, and discusses their influence on the project. The report examines stakeholder interests, which can be economic, social, or related to work environment improvements. It also explores tools for analyzing stakeholder influence, such as power grids, influence grids, and the salience model, along with a stakeholder matrix to assess engagement levels. The report concludes by contrasting stakeholder roles in IT with those in production businesses. This analysis is crucial for effective project management, ensuring stakeholder needs are met, and projects are completed successfully.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR STAKEHOLDER
Information technology stakeholder and stakeholder’s role
Name
Institution Affiliation

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Executive summary
The information technology business is one of the critical businesses to operate in the world
today. In contemporary technology, the business is on the pick due to its impact in the business
today. To run the business the management ought to understand the complexity and the
processes that entail in running the business. Information technology has various scopes which
require the management to understand the major requirement for effectiveness in that scope. One
of the scopes is information technology project management. Understanding the processes of
managing ICT project enhances the success of the project and putting the business on the market
pick. This field requires the performance of various roles that are carried out by different
stakeholders. The success of a project is determined by excellence roles of each stakeholder due
to the independence and integration of various roles required to complete a single project. The
project comes with risks that require be evaluating, monitoring to prevent project failures, this is
where the criticality of the project is involved and major concern is required to fulfill the project
objectives. In this case, I will analyze different stakeholders and roles involved in ICT project
management. I will also identify stakeholder’s interest and influence in the business.
Introduction
According to Parry, V (2016), Information and technology project management is the process
of planning, organizing and delegating responsibility for completion of specific information

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technology goals. Information technology projects involve software development that has
various activities which start at a specified time and end in an identifiable time. The goals of any
software development are to provide quantifiable and qualifiable software. The success of any
given IT project, Keutel & Basten (2014), is when the project is developed at the allocated
budget, specified time and meets the user minimum requirement. Delivering software that does
not meet these specifications lead to the failure of the project deliverables and may cost the
business huge losses (Chaudhry, 2015). Rasnacis, & Berzisa, (2015) state that, Software
development goes through various stages before the project is declared to be successful. In this
business, various stakeholders are involved in the process of developing effective software. Here
I will discuss different types of stakeholders and their roles in software development (Elias,
2015).
Project stakeholders
The people involved or have an interest in a project are called stakeholders. In Information
technology project management there are five main stakeholders, who include the project
managers, project team, functional management, project sponsor, and customers. Project
stakeholders refer to people who are directly affected by software development. These include
internal and external stakeholders (Rahman, Nasrin, & Akter, 2017).
A. Internal stakeholders
These are persons or individual directly involved in a project. They include
1) Project manager:

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The project manager is involved in managing the overall project from the start to the project
completion (Meng, & Boyd, 2017). The project manager ensures the project progress and is
completed with the specified time and under-allocated budget and meets the specified goals.
They ensure those projects are allocated enough resources. Other duties of a project manager
include;
 Providing update about the project progress to the upper managers
 Assigning roles to project team members
 Involved in recruiting project staff
 Determining the method used to develop a project
 Responsible for task scheduling
 The project manager leads and guides the project team.
 Involved in developing the project plan
 Manages the project deliverables according to the project plan.
2) Project team:
The project team consists of different groups who carry out all the activities involved in
executing the whole project. These include project design, development, and testing. Project
teams are involved in various phases of project development. They can be the internal or
contracted team to work on the project on a full time or part-time basis. The roles of the project
team include;

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 Contributing to the overall objective of the project which includes designing the right
interfaces for the software, coding and debugging the software to meet user requirements
 Completing individual task at the specified time due to the task dependency
 Provide expertise required to develop and complete the project. This involves
programming, designing, testing and debugging the software to achieve user’s
expectations.
 They work with software users to meet the expected business needs.
 They prepare the user documentation manual which entails all the
3) Project sponsor:
In view of Ditlev‐Simonsen, and Wenstop, (2013), the project sponsor is responsible for the
overall success and vision of the project. The project sponsor works directly with the project
manager to provide feedback and make a decision regarding the project implementations. The
project's sponsors ensure that project manager remains on track. The sponsor funds the project
and allocates and supply resources required for project development. The normally have a clear
project scope, project schedule, and resources required to complete the project. The success of
the project highly depends on the leadership and support of the project sponsor. The sponsors
help In providing an alternative when there are cost overruns to maintain the projected budget.
4) Executive project sponsor:

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This is the high ranking member of the management and the visible champion of the project
with the project team. The executive sponsor is the key decision maker and the final person who
approves the project on the phases, project change of scope and project outcomes.
 The executive is responsible for the project
 Approves changes associated with the project scope
 Funds the project and allocate additional funds for scope changes
 Approve project deliverables from the project team members.
5) Project analyst:
The project analyst defines the need for the business and gives a recommendation for the
solutions to make the business better. They work together with the project team to ensure the
project meets or solve the existing problems to enhance performance and productivity to the
organization. They assist in improving the value of the project outcomes. The analyst duties
include
 Participate in the project definition
 Gather project requirements from business and users
 Documents the business and technical requirements
 Verify that the project meets the specified requirements
 Participate in testing the project to validate the project objectives.
B. External stakeholders

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These are stakeholders indirectly linked to the project but have a major contribution to the
project development. The external stakeholders include
1) Customers :
Customers contribute to identifying the project requirement and help in the research to
discover the project requirement. Customers can be the one whom the project is being developed
to influence on their service delivery. Customers influence the initiation of the project by
providing the feedback of the project and through
2) Suppliers:
Suppliers provide essential service and equipment to the company to facilitate project
development.
3) The government:
Axelsson and Granath, (2018) identify government roles as making policies that facilitate in
bettering the working organization. The government roles are to regulate legislation that protect
the interest of various stakeholders and ensures that there is good relationship among various
stakeholders. [13]It also enforces the law where government policies are not adhered to by the
business Parry, & Lind, (2016) concludes.
Every stakeholder has their interest at hand that requires being addressed. These could be
interests that are intellectually, philosophically, politically, or academically motivated.
Stakeholders normally have interests in the business based on whether they can be affected by it

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or affect the business ( Elias, 2015). Based on their interest in the project they are managing or
coordinating, continuous involvement in the business brings positive impact that sees their desire
met. There are various interests that motivate the stakeholders’ interest and influence in the
business sector. These include;
 Economics focus to improve livelihood can be geared to initiating programs that improve
the economic status of the poor or low-income people to improve their living standards.
 Social change can be an effort to improve racial harmony could change the social
environment for members of different races or ethnic minority groups in society.
 Engaging workers in decision-making can improve work life and make people more
satisfied with their jobs.
 Providing workers with flexible work hours, giving leaves and providing relief program
can be a way of relieving stress thus enhancing the productivity of a worker in the
business
 Provision of free health care and medical facilities to the community can aid in improving
physical health to the poor and low-income community which can increase the business
influence in a given region (Di Maddaloni, & Davis, 2017).
Main stakeholders’ level of influence
Stakeholders may have a great impact on the project or be impacted by it. It is a good
idea to understand how people within your organization and outside are affected by the project.
This is determined by understanding stakeholder abilities and will power of the main

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stakeholders (Ponnappa, 2015). Analyzing stakeholders is important due to the impact they have
on the project and care should be taken on their analysis.
Stakeholders are not the same, their interest, expectations, level of influence and their
power differ greatly. These are the main reason as to why the management should be careful in
the analysis of the stakeholders as Rahman, Nasrin, & Akter, (2017) states.
After determining the stakeholders, the organization or business management should develop a
communication plan that engages the stakeholders when developing the project. The project
managers involved in these processes has full knowledge of the stakeholder’s ability and
understands their strength and weaknesses. Understanding the stakeholders enables the managers
to build a strong partnership with stakeholders with more interest and great influence within the
organization.
To analyze the stakeholder’s level of influence, several tools are used. These tools
enhance the determining factor level of influence of every stakeholder (Soh, Chua, & Singh,
2011). These tools include;
 Power grid tool which is used to determine each stakeholder level of power and interest
in the project
 Power influence grid tool, this tool measures the level of influence each stakeholder have
based on their power and their level of involvement in project development.
 Influence grid this tool rate the stakeholder influence based on their involvement and
abilities on the project objectives. This is done during project planning and project
execution.

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 Salience model is done to categorize the stakeholders on three categories, these include;
 The power which is the ability to exert their authority
 The urgency which is the need for immediate action and attention
 Legitimacy which is the determination of stakeholder involvement in the project is
appropriate.
Stakeholder matrix
This is a technique tool used to assess stakeholder level of engagement. C= Current
engagement. D= Desired engagement (Slivar, I2018).
stakeholder unawar
e
resistance neutra
l
supportive leading
john doe c d
project
team
c,d
bill c
black man c d
After completing the assessment, the management develops a plan to engage the unaware,
resistance and the neutral stakeholders and influence them toward the supportive, leading or
desired engagement. The work of supportive engagement is done by the project manager with

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the support of the project sponsor and the peers who can help to steer the project to achieve the
desired outcome.
Discussion forum
In the project management business in this field, the role of stakeholders differs with other
fields of business such as production business. The roles of stakeholder in the production
business are geared to enhancing the quality of the product to meet the market demand. The level
of involvement requires the key stakeholders to make the strategic decision while the operation
managers work to implement the strategic plan. Customers and suppliers are not directly
involved in the initial plan where in this project their key involvement is required in the initial
stage to determine project requirements. The customers are used to approve the quality of
products while in this project the project sponsor approves the final deliverables. To realize the
final outcome of the project all the stakeholders’ involvement is paramount in this business due
to the high level of engagement while in production, the leadership and the management are
involved in the realization of a quality product. Their leadership style determines the
effectiveness of the product. Project sponsor funds the project or the project owner in this
business, the company or the project team and management work to satisfy the project owner
project requirement. In production, the company leadership is involved to fund the production
together with the investors. The primary goal of project management is the effectiveness and
efficiency of the project to meet the user’s requirement as a stakeholder. In the production
business, the business goal is to satisfy the end users needs and to increase production.

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Conclusion
Modern businesses have continued to emerge resulting in attracting various stakeholders.
Stakeholders are individual or groups that have an interest in the business operation. These
include internal and external stakeholders. The internal stakeholders have direct engagement
with the business while external stakeholders have indirect benefit in the business. In different
business, stakeholders play different roles. In information technology project management,
stakeholders ensure the project at hand meets the need of the owner. In this, every stakeholder
has various roles to play. The project manager manages the project from the initial stage to its
closure by managing the project team, monitoring and evaluating processes of every task and
ensures project activities complete within a stipulated time. Project sponsors are the key decision
makers, fund the project and work together with the project manager to realize the effectiveness
of the project. The project teams are involved in implementing the project in every phase and
work with customers or users to realize the project requirements.
The project stakeholders can have an impact or be impacted by the project as they work
or develop the project. Their level of involvement determines their influence which leads to their
interest achievement. Whether their interest is achieved, their continuous involvement leads to
their success.
To determine the level of influence various tools are used to assess different stakeholders
in order of supporting them to be more engaged in the project development roles. This is done by
use of stakeholder’s matrix. The work of supportive engagement is done by the project manager