Stakeholder management strategies for information technology projects in MDAS in the Greater Accra Region

A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest in the development or result of a project. In Information Technology (IT) project management, any or all of the following may be a stakeholder: the client, the IT Manager, Systems Engineer, Programmers, System Developers, people employed in any other capacity in the project, local authorities, the end users of the product, professional bodies, local residents, local business owners, politicians and many more. Stakeholder management seems to be one of the major concerns in IT project management in Ghana. The prospect of project success is greatly reduced if stakeholders are effective in management. The communication and interrelationships among stakeholders mostly determine the total performance of an IT project, and have the critical responsibility for bringing a project to a successful completion. IT project involves processes of planning, scheduling and controlling. Proper management of all these will lead to a successful completion of the project. In other to run a successful project, it is necessary to address the needs of the project stakeholders, effectively predicting how the project will affect them and how they can affect the project. The suitable identification, classification and management of stakeholders is essential for collecting and managing stakeholder demands, and any misjudgement in this process could result in project failure. To promote the systematic identification, classification and management of project stakeholders, the built structure was described in this write-up. This research also adds to the theoretical knowledge of the nature and features of a systematic process to identify and classify stakeholders. It has the capacity to help project management in involving stakeholders and taking full advantage of their knowledge to improve the development of project value. Stakeholders have distinct roles to affect a project's course. They have the authority to be either a danger or an organization's benefit. Depending on their participation in the project and what they are anticipated to contribute, stakeholders ' strength could be high or low. This exploratory study's goals include identifying any key problems or variables within it; identifying stakeholders ' roles and duties and their effect on projects. The purpose of the study was to identify the various stakeholders in IT projects in MDAs in Greater Accra, to identify the roles of project stakeholders in I.T projects in MDAs in Greater Accra and finally, to identify stakeholder management strategies used in IT projects in MDAs in Greater Accra. The quantitative method was used and structure questionnaire was used to collect data. MS Excel was used to organize and analyze the data. The results of the analysis indicated that, sponsor is the most ranked stakeholders followed by customers. Developing of project plan as well as recruiting of staff as a role of project manager are the most ranked for the roles played by project manager. For the stakeholders’ management strategies, monitoring and collaborating are the most ranked.

Source: KNUST