Driving clarity in stakeholder management

Stakeholder management is the art of managing expectations. Each stakeholder has a different set of needs for the project, and their point of view is based on their personal experiences as well as their expectations for the project. The communication plan helps you draft ways to communicate across the entire span of needs of your stakeholders. Knowing how to communicate effectively is the key to driving clarity to (and with) your stakeholders.

There are two aspects to setting up a good communication plan: defining the types of communication you need and discovering who your stakeholders are. We’ll cover the different types of communication first because this is usually done only once in the company or team and is reused from project to project, with only minor modifications. These are static templates, whereas the list of stakeholders will vary from project to project. Once the stakeholders have been identified, the communication...