Hollywood Secrets of Project Management Success

Stakeholder Involvement for IT Projects

In Hollywood, the producer’s unit, the creative talent, and the movie crew are the three essential stakeholder groups, all more or less dependent on one another. In IT shops, that same dependency exists among the project team, IT management, and the business sponsors: They all are key stakeholders; they each have a stake in the outcome of the project. Removing any one from the framework of the project would open up management and communication holes. Nevertheless, many development organizations work with only a loose partnership set among these parties. Most often, it’s the business sponsors who seem to fade into the background. Sometimes it’s upper-level IT management. In my own experience, it’s striking ...