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.
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| Table 1:
Primary Stakeholder Interest and Influence Analysis
Adopted from: Information
Technology Project Management (Schwalbe 2004)
|
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| Table 2:
Secondary Stakeholder Interest and Influence Analysis
Adopted from: Information Technology Project Management (Schwalbe 2004)
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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.
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Table
3: Stakeholder Classifications Based on Power,
Legitimacy and Urgency
Source: (Mitchell, Agle & Wood 1997)
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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.
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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.
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Source: (Mitchell, Agle & Wood 1997)
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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.
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