Keep your stakeholders close

Every project has stakeholders.  From them we understand the true requirements and critical success factors. If you don’t keep them close, it is very hard to make your project a success.

How close?  Close enough that they know where the project is (good or bad) and you know what they really feel about that situation.  Painfully close at times.

Stakeholders are key to your communication plan. You need to plan who to communicate with, how, when, and what about.  Make sure that the right people are available to help the project make those communications and events go well.

Know what they need, how they need to hear it, know what they want and do everything you can to give that to them that way

Work out which communication channels work best for you and them.  Pay attention to which ways of communicating allow them to talk to you and which ones are good for you to give out news and information.

Never let your stakeholders wonder what’s going on. Project managers who do that forget that some stakeholders are actually more likely to cause the difficulty the project manager is afraid of because the facts are not there to engage with.