2.4 Stakeholders
Last updated
Last updated
When talking about the people involved in a legal project, those outside the project team should also be considered. Stakeholders are all people or even institutions (e.g. legislature) who have an interest or may affect the project. They consist, for example, of all team members in the law firm and on the client side who are part of the project, suppliers, and the counterparty, if any.
The core message of this chapter is that it is important to deal with stakeholders and assess them, and we want to show how to visualize this process. In practice, you will not map your stakeholders for every tiny case, but the more complex, the more critical and the bigger a case gets, the more important it gets to keep track of all the stakeholders involved and to know how to deal with them.
Even though it is the Product Owner who mainly deals with the stakeholders, it helps to visualize them so that they are transparent for everyone involved. Stakeholders can be shown on a grid which shows their infl uence on one axis and their interest in the project on another. For a more detailed assessment, a table can be fi lled out that deals with each individual stakeholder. On each one, it is noted how big their infl uence on and interest in the project are. From low “-“, through neutral “0”, to positive “+”. The last column consists of a note how to deal with a stakeholder of a particular rating or comments on an individual person.
The team’s client, Bob, reacted well to their Agile project and our team is thinking about being even more open. First, they have a meeting with the client’s project manager, Caleb, to introduce more details about the project and the people involved. They already know about the counterparty, Eric, and his company but they neither know much about Horizontal Building’s customer, nor about potential interfaces with other third parties. While they have ample experience in explaining to clients about the challenges of working with witnesses, Gabriel read about stakeholder management when he delved into Agile literature. They decide to implement the stakeholder tools often used in Agile to get a joint understanding with Caleb and Bob about who is directly or indirectly involved in the case and how much infl uence each stakeholder has. The stakeholder map might have an impact on the fl ow of information, based on the actions regarding the different stakeholders. With this you should not forget to inform any important stakeholders.
The team sets up a stakeholder map for the current case:
Internal Stakeholder
Partner A
+
+
Inform and use as champion.
Partner B
+
-
Inform and sway.
Marketing
-
+
Inform if there are interesting aspects that can be used.
Secretary
0
0
Keep in the loop.
IT Professional
+
0
Inform and bring on board.
External Stakeholder
Bob
+
+
Focus!
Caleb
-
+
Get information.
Eric
+
+
Focus! Sway
Sara
-
0
Use as expert.
Court
+
0
Inform
Legislator
+
-
Keep up to date with legislative changes
Internal Stakeholder
External Stakeholder
