201006 pmjournal is it what you know or who you know that leads to success
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8/12/2019 201006 PMJournal is It What You Know or Who You Know That Leads to Success
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Figure 1 illustrates a simple example of a project stakeholder network. We can assume that Brian is
the project manager and Debbie, Christine, Rich, Ahmed, Kumar and Chen are core team members.Tom has some supervisory capacity over this team; Pat is the sponsor and Beth the client.
Can you spot who are the most connected and powerful stakeholders in this network? Can youidentify any structural gaps that need to be bridged?
Upon preliminary review it may appear that Brian is the most connected and powerful person in thenetwork. However, further analysis reveals that Tom is the key node in this network because he is
the gatekeeper between the project team and the sponsor and client side of the network. Next,
Debbie and Christine are vital nodes between the right and the left side of the network.
Even though Brian appears to be well-connected and busy with his team, he needs to bridge the gap
between himself and Pat and Beth, instead of relying on Debbie and Christine or Tom. If he doesnot have a good relationship with either of them, or if either of them decide to withholdinformation, Brian can be negatively impacted on this project.
Detailed network analysis involves a combination of measures like
Degreesthe number of direct connections;
Betweeness how much a node controls what flows in the network;
Closeness how quickly a node can access all other nodes via a minimum of hops; and
Other stakeholder factorslike power, influence, authority and control of resources.
You can start simply by illustrating the network of stakeholders in your project environment andidentifying the key nodes and any gaps between stakeholders that might need to be bridged.
You can further leverage stakeholder network analysis in powerful ways depending upon what you
know about who you know; enhance your knowledge based on who they know, and how they knowthem; or expand your connections based on who you know, and who they know and influence.
Social media like Linked-in, Facebook and Twitter are good for developing your own personal
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network to leverage limited project resources through who you know.
Ultimately it is not the what or the who, but what you do,with the what and the who, that is
going to matter.
What are your observations and experiences, is it the what, or the whothat leads to success? Pleasesend your comments and stories toMr. Duggal.
Mr. Duggal is the managing principal ofProjectize Group LLC,specializing in next generation
training, consulting and tools, and aPMISeminarsWorld leader of the seminarBuilding a NextGeneration PMO and Portfolio Management.For questions on the content of the seminar, or your
comments and feedback, please contactMr. Duggal. 2010 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.
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