Hello, and welcome back. In the last class, we discussed the impact of organizational cultures and styles and how they impact the project, the pros and cons of different types of organizational styles, discussed the role of the knowledge areas, and the project managers role as a leader of the project. Now, let's look at how to identify and manage your stakeholders. After this module, you'll be able to identify project stakeholders, their roles and interests, how to manage them, how to keep them informed, and develop a plan to manage the entire process. The first step in identifying your stakeholders is to create a plan. The project stakeholder management process organizes the functions necessary to identify, classify, and manage your stakeholders in a methodical and logical way which will help you create a plan that you can execute. Using the plan typically includes a stakeholder analysis, where the analysis asks who are your stakeholders and why? What is their impact on the project and why? How are you going to manage the interaction to keep them informed enough to ensure that they're satisfied with the progress you're making on the project and fulfilling their expectations? When developing the plan, there are key elements to consider which include certain inputs, which utilized correctly will produce outputs that you can use to update your project management plan and keep the project on track. As you can see in this slide, there are four major components of the stakeholder management plan: identifying stakeholders, planning stakeholder engagement, managing stakeholder engagement and finally, monitoring their engagement. Addressing each of these areas will give you a sound foundation for your plan and should help you manage a critical component of any project, your stakeholders. Now, let's look at some of the key concepts and trends and how to utilize the project's stakeholder management process to create your stakeholder management plan. We will use a step-by-step approach and discuss some of the inputs you need to consider to ensure that you're not forgetting a critical component. Now, let's look at the first step in developing your stakeholder management plan, identifying your stakeholders. What is a stakeholder? This is a person, group, or entity that may affect or be affected by your project. That means, they have a vested interest in what you're doing. This could be a project sponsor, a client, regulators, lobby groups, or department inside your organization. Ultimately, this is anyone that may be impacted by the project. Even though another person in your company may not be the sponsor of a particular project, you should reach out to them if they're impacted. You can assess the level of engagement as we move forward. Some emerging practices in that area that have proven effective in identifying stakeholders is to include everyone on your team in the process, to review the stakeholders continuously, and to consult with them regularly. Also consider diversity, complex relationships and communications technology when selecting your stakeholder pool. Why is it important to identify stakeholders early? Because they have the ability to impact your project in both positive and negative ways. For example, if you're trying to implement a new automated customer service mechanism for your company that answers the easiest and most asked questions, it may be wise to speak to the people currently doing that job in the call center. They may have a very negative view of what you're doing initially but after speaking to them, they may become very supportive of it if it alleviates some of their workload when fully operational and allows them to handle the more complex problems. They are a stakeholder and need to be identified as such, and managed appropriately. Buying or at least understanding from your stakeholders is extremely important. Other examples are the sponsor, business partners, employees, even other managers that may be impacted by the project. Remember, a stakeholder is any person, group, or entity that may affect or be affected by your project. Keep in mind, that a stakeholder's influence may change over time, and that is your role as the project manager to manage the interaction.