Part 1

Understanding only comes through engagement. Projects often fail because the expectations, requirements, and elements that will lead to satisfaction are never even discussed on the front end, or as the project progresses. This first session in the series will overview the process of stakeholder engagement from project initiation through closing. Tools and techniques will be discussed as will methods to evaluate objectives, attitudes, and objections.

Part 2

Among the key challenges that project managers face is engaging internal stakeholders including project sponsors, their bosses, and their teams. It is often overlooked that before you can go live with a project, you need to be aligned internally first. You need to be unified, or at least understand what you all strive to achieve. The entire project team needs to understand the requirements of each other. Champions and opponents alike need to be managed. Management without engagement is not successful. This session will dive into power dynamics, roles, and responsibilities and why those are more important than title or location on the org chart, and how to get to the root of what the team values.

Part 3

As with anything, stakeholder engagement gone unmanaged will fail. You may check the box, but you will not achieve the results intended. Working with elected and appointed officials, the public, and other outside of your team is challenging. Some may say, without them anything is easy; however, without them you don’t have a project. A well-designed and executed plan will achieve results, even when those outside of the project team may not like what you have to say. Through successful engagement they will know they have been heard and thus mostly satisfied. Tools and techniques will be discussed as will methods to evaluate objectives, attitudes, and objections.