Stakeholders and project management

Stakeholder analysis is usually carried out by focusing on the internal and external stakeholders impacting on or affected by the project. However, the complexity of projects means that there is a very large number of potential stakeholders. Not all of them will be included as such in the project. The choice must be made on the basis of relevance, and the selection criteria usually used are interest and power.

These criteria are certainly useful, but in practice they turn out to be too simplistic. One of the consequences of over-simplistic criteria is that the project organization focuses on what facilitates and reduces complexity where it is particularly needed. Restoring complexity means working on the position of the organization in charge of the project. It must enable it to become aware of its own criteria, its own strengths and weaknesses, its representation of the world and what is important to it.