Project Stakeholder Analysis - A Practical Approach using Stakeholder Topography Model

The original name has been kept anonymous to protect the identity of the organization.

1.    Project Background

ACME (Pvt) Ltd. is an entrepreneurial endeavour established to alleviate the livelihood and economy of the Krypton farmers by providing expertise in organic farming and technology enabled solutions for agriculture information. The company is registered under the Board of Investment of Krypton (BOI) and is the only “organically certified company specializing in Agro Forestry” (ACME 2011).


Syerix Systems (Pvt.) Ltd is a software company in Krypton specialised in open source technologies with a specific focus on web and mobile based solutions. ACME (Pvt.) Ltd was successful in securing a grant from the Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) under the Training and Capacity Building Programme and has partnered with Syerix Systems to develop an IT based information system “ACME Aginfo System” for the farmer communities in the Gotham City town, district of Arkham. The proposed solution will be a web & mobile solution to allow the users to interact with the system by SMS and receive real time market prices, weather conditions, transportation options, and a comparison of profitability for each market selection decision. The cost of the entire project was estimated at §5000,000, with an estimated completion by December 2011.

2.    Project Stakeholders

In order to analyse the various entities expected to be the direct or indirect beneficiaries of the project, a comprehensive analysis was conducted to determine the relationships and influences of the stakeholders on the project. Importance of aforesaid analysis is advocated by various researchers in the field of both strategic management and project management. Freeman (1984) provided a definition of stakeholders as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives”. Another definition provided by Cleland (1986) states that the stakeholders should be determined by examining their ‘interest’ in the project outcomes and how the expected outcomes of the project can have an impact on the stakeholder ‘well-being’.  From a software engineering perspective, Boehm and Ross (1989) presented the idea of “Theory W” of software project management in which the focus was given to the developing situations so that all entities participating in a project will benefit from it and hence each will expected to have a positive interest toward its success. Kerzner (2001) argued that the “stakeholder are individuals or groups that either directly or indirectly are affected by the performance of the organisation”. Further, the Project Management Institute (2008) states that “stakeholders are individuals and organisations who are actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected as a result of project execution or successful project completion”. By analysing the project stakeholder definitions mentioned about, it can be concurred that there is an agreement between different authors regarding the importance of stakeholders in terms of three keywords, ‘interest’, ‘direct & indirect affect’, and ‘positive & negative affect’. Hence, by taking all definitions discussed above into consideration, the stakeholders for the ACME Aginfo Project will be defined as “the group and individuals having a vested interest and a direct or indirect impact on their socio-economic development as a result of the project”. 

To ascertain the key players and beneficiaries of the ACME Aginfo Project, a variety of methods including, interviews, observations, filed visits, and historical records of the ICTA (Information Communication Technology Agency) of Krypton were analysed. Details of the important project stakeholders are as follows;

2.1. ACME (Pvt.) Ltd.

ACME will be the main sponsor of the project. The success of the project will have a direct impact on the strategic objectives of the organisation. The company will be committing the financial and capital resources towards the project and hence will have a direct role to play with the project team. The commitment from the staff of ACME (Pvt.) Ltd will be a crucial aspect and hence must be taken into consideration to understand their knowledge, motivation, and expectations from the system.

2.2. ICTA-Krypton (Information Communication Technology Agency).

Being a government watchdog for designing and implementing capacity building projects and ICT policies and frameworks in the country, ICTA will provide partial funding for the ACME Project. This funding will be a part of the Capacity Building Programme (ICTA 2010); ICTA will have a direct interest in the project.

2.3. RDA (Rural Development Authority).

The project is expected to develop the economies of the rural population of Arkham district and hence the RDA (Rural Development Authority) will be interested in the project outcomes for the purpose of the transportation infrastructure planning and implementation.

2.4. Syerix Systems (Project Team).

Syerix Systems’ project team will be a direct beneficiary of the project. Their interest will be towards the successful development and implementation of the proposed information systems. Any decision about the project time, quality and cost baselines will have a direct impact on the project team.

2.5. Farmer Community

The farmer communities in Arkham district will be the principle beneficiaries of the project. The outcomes of the project will have a direct impact on their livelihood and socio-economic environment. The active participation and acceptance of the proposed system will be a crucial factor for the success of the project. Being the end users of the project their expectations must be carefully analysed and recorded to identify the usability, functionality, and other non-technical factors to reduce the resistance to change. The main factor the project team should be focused on is the user friendliness of the proposed solution and the language options for the sending and retrieving information from/ to the system. Majority of this segment will have basic knowledge of computers; however, almost all are users of mobile phones.

2.6. Alien-life Department

The selected district is close to the National Alien Sanctuary and hence the Alien-life Department will be keen to understand the project progress and outcomes. Arkham maintains a massive population of Alien Rondor (Kryptonian elephants) and any changes in the production patterns of the farmers may have an impact on the ongoing human-rondor conflict.

2.7. University of Arkham

The Agriculture Department of the University will be directly involved in the project by providing the expertise in the areas of agro-economics, soil testing and organic farming methods to educate the farmer communities.

2.8. Kylog Telecom

The largest telecommunication company in Krypton is selected as a partner to the project for providing the vital SMS system support. Kylog Telecom will be having a supplier role with the project sponsor and the client.

2.9. Krypton Telecom

The national land and internet service provider will be keen to improve the internet penetration and availability of the telephony services in rural parts of the country. At present, the landline access in the project’s physical area is limited and hence most farmers will be initially using the mobiles to communicate with the system. However, it is expected that the growth in the project will increase the need and requirements of the land phone lines in the future.

2.10.             Local Government Departments

The main objective of the local bodies is to provide various public resources to the rural communities. The local bodies will be keen to understand and monitor the socio-economic impact of the proposed system.

2.11.             Jill & Doors Foundation

The Doors Foundation works closely with various organisations around the world on projects to improve people’s health and to develop opportunities to uplift poverty. The Doors Foundation provides the expertise and knowledge to ACME (Pvt.) Ltd in social sustainability and organic agriculture methods for its projects. Representatives from the Doors Foundation will be providing their input and experiences of working on similar projects around the world to determine the features of the proposed system.

2.12.             Organic Control Association

The Organic Control Association certifies the quality of green/organic agriculture products. This certification is vital for ACME (Pvt.) Ltd to gain international reputation for its future strategy.  ACME is a member of the Organic Control Association and hence, as a certified member, she can deal in organic farming and other organic produce trading activities. The certificate provides accreditation by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the European Union Organic Certification, and Japanese Agriculture Standards (JAS), the three main markets ACME is specifically focusing on embarking into for its organic farming products.

3.   Evaluation and Analysis of the Project Stakeholders

Being an Information System Project, it is deemed important to analyse the stakeholder influences from the point of view of the IS/IT project success and relationship with the stakeholder analysis. The analysis of the influences and interest of various stakeholders identified above is a critical element for the success of the ACME Aginfo System Project. All decisions about the planning, execution and implementation of the project activities can be severely affected if key issues remain unidentified and as a result, the project team will not be able to develop alternatives and strategies for a successful project implementation. Nutt (2002) advocates the imperative for the project teams to carefully analyse the influences of the stakeholders on the project. Further, Lyytinen and Hirschcheim (1987) emphasised the achievement of key stakeholders requirements and ‘expectations’ as a focal point for a successful information system project. A comprehensive summary of the primary and secondary stakeholder analysis and suggestions on managing the relationship are provided in Table 1 and Table 2 respectively.

Table 1: Primary Stakeholder Interest and Influence Analysis

 Adopted from: Information Technology Project Management (Schwalbe 2004)

Table 2: Secondary Stakeholder Interest and Influence Analysis

Adopted from: Information Technology Project Management (Schwalbe 2004)

3.1. Stakeholder Relationship

It is important to identify the levels of prioritisation of stakeholders to understand the influences and type of impact on the project performance. The Stakeholder Topology Model developed by Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997) was used to divide the stakeholders into appropriate categories. The findings of Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997) are summarised in the following Table using Power, Legitimacy and Urgency attributes.  

 

Table 3: Stakeholder Classifications Based on Power, Legitimacy and Urgency

Source:  (Mitchell, Agle & Wood 1997)

By analysing the roles and relationships of the identified stakeholders inline with the categories identified in Table 3, the results of the applied Stakeholder Topography model are provided in the Table 4.

Table 4: Applied Stakeholder Classifications Based on Power, Legitimacy and Urgency

Mitchell, Agle & Wood (1997) argued that “power” is the extent to which an entity has or can acquire “access to coercive, utilitarian, or normative means, to impose its will in the relationship”. Furthermore, the term “legitimacy” is described as “ a desirable social good, that it is something larger and more shared than a mere self-perception, and that it may be defined and negotiated differently at various levels of social organisation” (Suchman 1995; Mitchell, Agle & Wood 1997). Time sensitivity and criticality were the two attributes considered by Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997) to define “urgency”. Time sensitivity was described as the “degree to which managerial delay in attending to claim or relationship is unacceptable to the stakeholder” whereas, “criticality” was defined as the “importance of the claim or the relationship to the stakeholder”.

Based on the above mentioned discussion, Figure 1 illustrates the derived stakeholder topography for the ACME Aginfo Project.

Table 5: Legend for Stakeholder Topography

Figure 1: Applied Stakeholder Topography Model

Source:  (Mitchell, Agle & Wood 1997)

4.    Conclusion

The critical analysis of the stakeholders concurred that there are various entities whose requirements the project team must take into consideration. The prioritisation of the stakeholders was conducted using the stakeholder topography model by Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997) and as a result the stakeholders were categorised into three categories namely latent, expectant and definitive stakeholders. The stakeholders were further divided for better understanding of their influence and interest on the project into dormant, discretionary, demanding, dependent, dangerous, and definitive sub categories using the three core attributes (Power, Legitimacy, Urgency). The strategies to overcome the issues identified and to meet the stakeholder expectations were critically analysed and identified using the model provided by Schwalbe (2004). The analysis provides a clear understanding of the various aspects of the stakeholder expectations which the management of the project team must acknowledge and progressively elaborate to ensure a successful implementation and achievement of the project objectives.

5.    Recommendations

It is recommended that the project team must ensure a clear and comprehensive communication management plan is in place to provide the required information and data to the stakeholders identified in the aforementioned analysis. This project, although an IT Solution, however, being in the domain of the socio-economic and agriculture knowledge areas, the project environment will include various cultural and social issues which will require careful understanding. A few solutions were provided to handle the stakeholder relationship in Table1, and Table 2. The active involvement of the definitive stakeholders will be a crucial point for this project to overcome problems like resistance to change and scepticism of the famer community. The stakeholders categorised under the “dangerous” category must be continuously monitored so that the project objectives do not conflict with the local government bodies and environmental policies of the Alien-life Department. A robust project management information system must be in place to capture all required information, data, and progress reports to ensure smooth dissemination of the required information to relevant stakeholders and the project team for ACME Aginfo Project.