Demystifying Stakeholder Analysis in New Product/Service Development

Editor’s note: This paper was originally presented at the 3^rd Annual UT Dallas Project Management Symposium in Richardson, Texas, USA (http://pmsymposium.utdallas.edu/) in August 2009. As Media Partner for that event, PMForum agreed to republish selected papers in PM World Today. This paper is included here with the consent of the author and permission of the Graduate Program in Project Management at The University of Texas at Dallas School of Management, who is the copyright holder of the conference proceedings. All conditions and disclaimers of the copyright holder pertain.

Abstract

Every business struggles with New Product and Service Development. Average failure rates for NPD vary across industries but generally failure rates are unacceptably high and increasing due to the ever-rising complexities. With the current economic downturn, companies have an opportunity to look around and see what works in NPD. In other words what are some of the key elements to succeed in NPD? Stakeholders are arguably very important to project success, but how do you recognize and organize them? We will provide a framework from which you can identify the various types of stakeholders, the roles they play, analyze their effects on your projects and more fully engage positive stakeholders.

PMBOK® makes numerous references to positive and negative stakeholders (to be precise in PMBOK® 4, the word “stakeholder” appears 385 times). On a simple project stakeholder analysis might be limited to the customer requirements to help generate a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). However for new products and services this is clearly not enough. A new product or service needs more than just being on time, on budget and fitted with the appropriate quality to be called a success – it needs to make a profit!!! So, what types of stakeholders do successfully delivered products and services have and what are some of the ways to engage and manage them?!

Our intent is to present a model for grouping stakeholders by which project managers conceiving new products and/or services can use to increase the rates of success for new projects. In addition PMs will be able to quickly identify entire stakeholder groups missing or improperly identified on a project.

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About the Author René Le Bel Author René Le Bel is currently the program manager for an educational science publisher in Dallas. As an entrepreneur he has worked with publishers to develop new products (emerging concepts) into educational programs. René has a B.A. in Modern Languages from the Université de Montréal, has completed his MBA in Project Management through the University of Texas at Dallas and recently received PMP certification from PMI. He can be contacted at rene@lebel.com

About the Author Anwar Ali Co-Author Anwar Ali is currently a Team Lead at Atos Origin, a global information technology company with revenues EUR 5.5 billion and worldwide IT partner for the Olympic Games. He has worked for several fortune 500 companies in providing IT consulting services for US and Global Projects. Anwar has a degree in Computer Science from Jadavpur University, a Certificate in Human Resource Processes from Cornell University and is pursuing an Executive MBA in Project Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. He can be contacted at anwarali93@gmail.com.