2.3. Stakeholders

A stakeholder is a person, a group, or an organization that is actively involved in the project or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by the results achieved by or the completion of the project. A project manager should identify both the internal and external stakeholders of and their influence levels on the project (see Figure 2.4). Individual stakeholders often have different conflicting objectives. For example, the program manager concentrates more on benefit management, the project leader concentrates more on technical feasibility, while the project sponsor concentrates more on cost factors associated. Stakeholders who are not in favor of a particular project deliverable may try to negatively influence a project, which can manifest itself as rumors or other such negative influences. Examples of stakeholders are the organization's project management office, the project team, the project manager, project sponsors, and the implementing organization.

Figure 2.4. The typical internal and external stakeholders of the project