13.4 Monitor Stakeholder Engagement

Check whether stakeholder engagement is working and adjust if it is not.

Monitoring and Controlling / Stakeholder · ← PMBOK reference · See it on the map

Why it matters

A stakeholder's support can quietly fade even when the engagement plan is being followed; this is what catches the gap before it becomes open opposition.

What done looks like

Stakeholder engagement levels are tracked against the plan and gaps are addressed.

First time tip

Reassess a stakeholder's actual engagement level, not just whether the planned activities happened. Attending a meeting is not the same as being engaged.

What you need (Inputs)

• Project Management Plan
• Stakeholder Engagement Plan
• Issue Log
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: impediments (driftless/models/agile.py:Impediment) — an impediment IS an issue raised against the team's progress; healthy once none are open or in progress
• Work Performance Data
• Agreements
• Organizational Process Assets

How you do it (Tools & Techniques)

• Data Analysis
• Decision Making
• Data Representation
• Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix
• Communication Skills
• Interpersonal and Team Skills
• Meetings

What you get (Outputs)

• Work Performance Information
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: sprints under way (driftless/models/delivery.py:Sprint) for an agile project, or service levels and incidents (driftless/models/operations.py) for an operations-cadence one — a sprint under way is the work performance data an agile team reads instead of a baseline-and-actuals pair; an operations-cadence project reads the same question off its service levels and the incidents raised against them
• Change Requests

Worked example

The tenant next door stops replying to the weekly note. Treating that silence as a signal, rather than counting the note as engagement, is what surfaces the scaffold complaint while it is still a conversation and not a call to the council.

Common pitfalls

• Counting messages sent as engagement, without checking any were read or answered.
• Reassessing engagement only after a stakeholder has already objected publicly.
• Adjusting the plan on paper without changing what anyone actually does.

How driftless helps

• Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix can be run here.
• Meetings can be run here.