FEATURED PAPER

Perspectives on Program/Project Stakeholder and Benefits Management

By Alan Stretton, PhD

Sydney, Australia

Abstract

This paper discusses different perspectives in the literature about the relationships of program/project stakeholders and benefits. Identification and classifications of stakeholders are first summarized. This paper focuses on key beneficiary and adversarial stakeholders, and particularly on the presence/absence of links between key beneficiary stakeholder management and benefits management in the literature. There are three distinctively different approaches to such linkages, which broadly reflect different perspectives on the nature of the key beneficial stakeholders:

• Where benefits are linked to the organization at large

• Where benefits are linked to key individual stakeholders or stakeholder groups

• Where benefits are linked to the organisation’s clients/customers

With the first perspective, the needs of the key stakeholder, namely the organization, and the benefits to be delivered, are commonly determined through organizational strategic planning processes. Benefits are not linked directly with individual stakeholders or stakeholder groups. The latter are consulted as part of a process of ‘selling’ the program to them, but do not appear to participate directly in establishing benefits. Processes for stakeholder management and benefits management are not closely coordinated.

With the second perspective, the needs and expectations of key stakeholders are ascertained, and translated into expected benefits. The literature has little to say about how to go about ascertaining stakeholder needs and expectations, but a good deal to say about processes that effectively combine beneficiary stakeholder management and benefits management processes. A comparison table of processes from the first and second perspectives suggests that the former could benefit from involving key stakeholders in determining needs and benefits. (One suspects that this happens in practice, but it is not spelt out in two key program management publications).

With the third perspective, the organisation’s clients/customers are the key beneficiaries. Processes for determining their needs were discussed in another paper, Stretton 2009e, and are summarized here.

Finally, materials from the literature on managing adversarial stakeholders are amalgamated and summarized.

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About the Author Alan Stretton, PhD Author Alan Stretton is currently a member of the Faculty Corps of the University of Management and Technology, Arlington, Virginia, USA. In 2006 he retired from a position as Adjunct Professor of Project Management in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, which he joined in 1988 to develop and deliver a Master of Project Management program. Prior to joining UTS, Mr. Stretton worked in the building and construction industries in Australia, New Zealand and the USA for some 38 years, which included the project management of construction, R&D, introduction of information and control systems, internal management education programs and organizational change projects. He has degrees in Civil Engineering (BE, Tasmania) and Mathematics (MA, Oxford), and an honorary PhD in strategy, programme and project management (ESC, Lille, France). Alan was Chairman of the Standards (PMBOK) Committee of the Project Management Institute from late 1989 to early 1992. He held a similar position with the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM), and was elected a Life Fellow of AIPM in 1996. He was a member of the Core Working Group in the development of the Australian National Competency Standards for Project Management. He has published over eighty professional articles. Alan can be contacted at alanailene@bigpond.com.au.