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1.  Introduction

The output of process 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Management, is the Stakeholder Management Plan.  The purpose of this post is to list the elements of that plan, by taking the list that occurs in the PMBOK® guide and organizing the elements by knowledge area.

2.  Stakeholder Management Plan

As you can see from the elements of the Stakeholder Management Plan, many of the elements deal with the communication knowledge area.  This is understandable since Stakeholder Management used to be considered part of the Communications Management knowledge area in previous editions of the PMBOK® Guide, but has become a separate knowledge area in the 5^th Edition.

Also, you can see that scope is important, in that any proposed changes have to include their projected impact on stakeholders.  In addition, any change proposed changes from stakeholders must include their projected impact on the other stakeholders.

Finally, there is provision in the plan for revision to the Stakeholder Management Plan if certain changes occur on the project which may alter the engagement level of any, or all, of the stakeholders.

The next post will discuss the inputs, tools & techniques, and outputs of the next process, 13.3 Manage Stakeholders.

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1.   Introduction

As part of process 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Management, one of the tools involved is Analytical Techniques.    Actually, stakeholders have already been analyzed on a macro level in the previous process, 13.1 Identify Stakeholders.   In that process, which is in the Initiating Process Group, stakeholders are identified and analyzed as having low or high power or influence on the project, and low or high interest in the project.    The intersection of these two categories gives four quadrants of possibilities, each with its own general method for engaging the stakeholders, as seen in the following diagram.

This process takes the analysis from the macro to the micro level, and for each stakeholder, the current engagement level is determined (by interviewing the stakeholders), the desired engagement level is determined by the project management team, and then actions are identified that will bring the current level in line with the desired level.

2.   Analytical Techniques

One of the ways to analyze the current engagement level is along a scale as listed below:

a.   Unaware–of project and potential impacts

b.   Resistant–aware of project and potential impacts and resistant to change

c.   Neutral–aware of project, yet neither supportive nor resistant

d.  Supportive–aware of project and potential impacts and supportive to change

e.  Leading–aware of project and potential impacts and actively engaged in ensuring the project a success.

For the list of stakeholders in the stakeholder register, a Stakeholders Engagement Assessment Matrix is created where a C is put in one of the five columns Unaware, Resistant, Neutral, Supportive, and Leading for the current engagement level of that stakeholder.    Based on a realistic appraisal obtained through expert judgment and meetings (other techniques of the process 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Management), a D is put at the desired level.

Then actions and communications required to close the gaps between the C or current engagement level and the D or desired engagement level are identified, again using expert judgment and meetings.

The Stakeholders Engagement Assessment Matrix is then used to update the Stakeholder Register.

The next post talks about the main output of this process, the Stakeholder Management Plan, and what elements it consists of.

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This series of posts take the Ken Wilber’s introduction to Integral Theory called A Brief History of Everything and discusses the 20 tenets concerning the concept of a holon and how they can be applied to the field of project management.   This post covers tenet #5.    I have been posting one tenet a week on Sundays in a event to cover the 20 tenets in some detail, at least as far as my understanding of them goes.

NOTE:  When I recently looked at Appendix A in A Brief History of Everything which lists all 20 tenets, I realized that he has broken some of the original 12 tenets into subparts, so what I plan to do is post on the original 12.    It will be a more coherent presentation of the tenets that way, in my opinion.  

1.  Recap–definition of a holon

A holon is an entity which consists of components, and yet is itself a component of a larger whole. The reason for the introduction of the concept is that bridges the philosophical divide between those who think that reality is composed of isolated units (atomism) and those who think that it is composed of a large web of interconnected parts). The first two tenets are as follows:

2.  Recap of tenets #1-4 (for details on these tenets, refer to previous posts)

Tenet #1. Reality as a whole is not composed of things or processes, but of holons.

Holons must be considered from the standpoint of interacting with other holons on the same level, and with holons at higher levels (of which the holon is just a part) and lower levels (which comprise the parts of the holon).

Tenet #2 Holons display four fundamental capacities: The horizontal capacities of self-preservation, self-adaptation, and the vertical capacities of self-transcendence and self-dissolution.

Holons follow the dual rules of evolution when it comes to holons at the same level:    survival of the fittest (self-preservation) and survival of the fitting (self-adaptation).    Holons have the property of being able to evolve to the next highest level (self-transcendence), and they can also “devolve” into their component parts (self-dissolution).

Tenet #3 Holons emerge

As mentioned in Tenet #2, holons have the property of self-transcendence or evolution to the next highest level.    This is not just a higher degree of organization, but also involves emergent properties or differences in kind from the level below.

Tenet #4 Holons emerge holarchically

Holons, as seen above, are units that are both wholes containing parts and parts of larger wholes.   This kind of nested or concentric linking of holons reminiscent of the Russian matroshka dolls is considered a holarchy.    In contrast, we see in an organizational chart the traditional notion where parts are linked vertically to the levels above them (the notion of hierarchy), and horizontally to the units at the same level (the notion of a heterarchy).

3.   Tenet #5

The fifth holon is as follows:

Each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessor(s)

This can be seen by realizing that holons, the units that are both wholes containing parts and parts of larger wholes, link up to higher levels and down to lower levels concentrically rather than in just a horizontal and vertical fashion, like you would get in an organizational chart.    An example from biology would be the fact that atoms form molecules, which in turn link together to form cells, which in turn link together to form organisms.    This holarchical system of concentric organization of systems may seem like a modern idea, but it exists already in classical philosophy and medieval theology.

An example from classical philosophy would be Aristotle’s classification of the different “souls” of organisms.   The word “soul” did not mean what we mean by it today; the “soul” of an organism to Aristotle meant more like the concept of the potentialities or capabilities of that organism.     Here are the three levels of “souls” according to Aristotle

a.   Plants contain a vegetative soul, which allows the organism to take in nutrients.

b.   Animals also contains a vegetative soul, because they take in nutrients, but they also have a motive soul, which allows them to move and reproduce.

c.   Humans contain both a vegetative soul and a motive soul, because they take in nutrients, and they move and reproduce, but they also have a rational soul, which allows them to think and reflect consciously.

In medieval theology, this system was expanded to include a spiritual dimension, and thus a theological system called The Great Chain of Being was developed, as denoted by the diagram below.

Another way of looking at this concentric arrangement of holons is to say that a holon preserves the existence of lower levels of holons, but negates their separateness or isolatedness by binding them in a larger, more complex whole.   There is a downward causation or downward influence where a higher level holon limits the degrees of freedom of the lower holons, and organizes them into new patterns.

4.   Application to Project Management

A team member is part of a project; the project includes its team members, but transcends them as individuals by virtue of the project plan, which organizes their individual efforts in such a way as to accomplish the objectives of that project.   A project manager can preserve the integrity of the individual members by encouraging their talents and capabilities; at the same time, he or she must negate their separateness or tendency to work at cross-purposes by articulating the vision of the project at the outset.

If you go on to the higher level of the organization, you can see that a project is part of an organization; there can be intermediate levels such as a program or portfolio.    But in any case, a project must serve the strategic business objectives of the organization.    Management can preserve the integrity of the individual projects by giving them the resources they need to be completed; however, management must also negate the tendency to take so many resources that the larger strategic business objectives cannot be met.    A project manager can help with this as well by understanding those strategic objectives and making sure that the project is in line with them.    Any proposed changes to the project must be analyzed, therefore, not only with regards to the effects of those proposed changes on the various constraints of the project (mainly the scope, time and cost), but also with regards to these strategic objectives.

For example, if a project was picked because its return on investment (ROI) was more favorable than other projects that could have been chosen, then if changes to the project require that it take longer than expected, then the project manager must compute the new ROI (which in this example would most likely be lower than before) and make sure that the new ROI is still favorable to those of the projects.    If not, then the project manager must coordinate in two directions:   he or she must communicate to management and to the team members that this proposed change will no longer align it with the strategic objectives.    The team members must be therefore aware that this change in the project may require that the management cannot no longer support it and may therefore “pull the plug” and close the project prematurely.    This may make them come up with a different solution that produces the objectives of the project without jeopardizing the overall strategic objectives of the organism.

5.   Conclusion

The fact that an emergent holon includes but also transcends its predecessors (i.e., lower-level holons) has important implications for project management in that the higher level must utilize all the capabilities and potentialities of the units from the level level, but must add to it a higher level of organization or patterning which keeps those units from working against each other, and for a common purpose.    As a project manager, being sensitive to this principle will help motivate your team members, who depend in part on the leadership of the project manager for motivation, and will help maintain good relations with management, upon whose resources your project depends.

The post one week from today will cover tenet #6.

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On Labor Day weekend, I finished reading the book by Rick Perlstein called Nixonland:  The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.    I had been listening to an Audiobook version of the book during the summer and completed the last CD during the weekend–I decided to do a blog post today based on my impressions of the book.

1.   My Childhood through the Looking Glass of History

For someone who grew up in the 1960s, it was interesting to hear a history of the times one lived through in the hazy, distant memory of childhood.    The Cuban missile crisis, the Civil Rights movement, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the various cultural movements (the “women’s lib” movement, the gay rights movement), the beginning of the ecology movement, Nixon’s visit to China and the opening of US-China relations, the beginning of negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union (SALT I), the Six-Day War in 1967 war between Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and the NASA’s Apollo Program, culminating in the visits by 12 American astronauts to the surface of the moon starting with Neil Armstrong in 1969, were all formative events of the 1960s that I remember reading about in the newspapers.     My father was a newspaper reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and he bequeathed to me his interest in world events and in history.

Now being able to see those events with the 20-20 hindsight that history affords, I can see that there are links between those times and the world we live in.    Nixonland is a book that really brought this truth home to me.    In 7th grade, our social studies teacher Mr. Siegel did an experimental summer camp on the subject of history where over a series of 6 weeks, he took the events of the Vietnam war and went back in increments of 5 years to show how we got into the situation we were in.    Since we were in 1970, this involved explaining how the war in 1965 had been ramped up by President Johnson after the Gulf of Tolkin had given him the ostensible reason for getting the military involved openly and not just in an “advisory capacity.”   Then we went back to 1960, where were introduced to the political players in North and South Vietnam,  Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively.    Back to 1955, we learned the French had been booted out the previous year, and that there was a battle to create an “independent” South Vietnam at the Battle of Saigon, where Ngo Dinh Diem ended up taking control.    On and on we went back to World War II, where the liberation from the Japanese led many Vietnamese to believe that they were going to be a free country, only to find out that the victorious Allies had “rewarded” their country to France as part of French Indochina.   By playing the tape of history backwards, we gained an understanding of the conflict that few 7th graders (or indeed few Americans at that time) were afforded.    Mr. Siegel even had a “pro-war” and “anti-war” debate between two veterans, one from World War II and one from the Vietnam War.    

He insisted we hear both sides of the debate, and although I remember siding with the Vietnam veteran in the debate, and, although I suspected Mr. Siegel sympathized with the anti-war side of the debate (he refused to give his opinion on the war openly), I was impressed with two things:   first, the respect that Mr. Siegel showed the other side of the debate, and second, the fact that wanted to arm us not with weapons of war, but with weapons of knowledge so that we would at least be making an informed decision when it came time for us to vote (which for us was 5 years in the future).

His enlightened approach to the teaching of history has stuck with me for the rest of my life.    History is not about the past; hell, it’s not even past.    We’re living with the results …

2.   The Fracturing of America

Rick Perlstein’s book was like taking the present red state-blue state divide and playing the tape of history backwards to see where a lot of the “fracturing” started.   His thesis is that Richard Nixon was at the forefront of the manipulation of social and political forces between 1965 and 1972 which reshaped the political landscape from a liberal-leaning consensus at the time of the Kennedy assassination (culminating in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), into two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans.     The two main forces that led impetus to this “counter-revolution” against this liberal consensus were a) the backlash against the gains made by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and b) the backlash against the anti-war movement.    Nixon him able to make political headway out of these two forces because of his ability to tap into the resentments of various constituencies that felt that their concerns were being marginalized by the civil rights and/or the anti-war movement.    How was he able to tap into these populist pressures?    Because he shared them.    He styled himself as an “Orthogonian”, one of the names of the social clubs at Whittier College that was composed of the social strivers, as opposed to the privileged elite, the so-called “Franklins”.    Growing up poor gave him an empathy with the common man which he never forgot, and which he used to great effect throughout his political career.

The fracturing of America went along two lines as mentioned above, with Nixon shepherding the exit of the southern Dixiecrats who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Republican Party, and the bolstering of the cultural backlash against the anti-war movement and the progressive social movements of women’s lib, gay liberation, etc.    You can see those movements playing out in the Republican Party of today.    However, the gerrymandering of various states’ election districts has made a kind of right-ratcheting effect so that there is more pressure for the Republican Party to move to the right (due to fear of primary challenges from the far right) than there is to move to the left (due to challenges against the Democratic party in the general election).    So what we see today is a Republican party that, while it would welcome Nixon’s views in the area of race and culture, would be so far to the right that it would see him as a liberal president.

3.   The Last Liberal President

Let’s take the five areas of the Global Risk report of 2013 as produced by the World Economic Forum:    economic, environmental, geopolitical, social, and technological.     In the “social” arena, as mentioned above, his support of those forces that opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the various social progressive movements engendered by the energy behind the anti-war movement, would have put him firmly in the Republican camp of today.

Let’s look at the other 4 areas, however.    In the economic arena, he was certainly not a “free market fundamentalist” like Reagan or Thatcher; in fact, he was willing to use wage & price controls to slow the growth of inflation, which was anathema to Milton Friedman at the time.    He would have been judged a liberal in the economic arena by today’s standards.    Also, the budgets of his administration had domestic spending exceeding military spending for the first time since World War II.   Liberal again!

In the environmental arena, Richard Nixon championed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and subsequent regulatory efforts by that agency to reduce pollution, despite the protests from various manufacturers.   Liberal again!

In geopolitical terms, yes, he was a military hawk on Vietnam in order to get the U.S. to the point where it could end the war on favorable political terms.   However, rather than exacerbating the US-Soviet tensions to drum up support for military expenditures, he actually started creating the groundwork for a detente between the two powers, a temporary lessening of tension, that culminated in the signing of the anti-ballistic missile treaty SALT I.    And there a reason why, in Star Trek VI, the character of Spock is heard to say, “On Vulcan, we have a saying:  only Nixon can go to China.”   He was pragmatic and not as ideologically driven as later Republican Presidents such as Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, and was therefore able to create an opportunity that I think no Democrat before him and certainly no Republican after him would have been able to accomplish.    Here he would have been considered a liberal by today’s Republican standards for “appeasing” our Communist rivals.

In the technological arena, he insisted on dismantling the American Space Program after the Apollo Program completed in the early 1970s.    The original plan by NASA was to have a permanent Moon base by the 1970s, and to start a mission to Mars in the 1980s.    That was the future that never was …   Here, I think he would have been more at home with the Republicans of today, who are if not anti-technology, certainly anti-science in some of their pronouncements.

Therefore, in 3 out of the 5 areas I have mentioned, economic, environmental, and geopolitical, Nixon would have been considered a Liberal president by today’s Republican party.    Nonetheless, the social arena is the one area where the beginnings of the fracturing of America are the most apparent, and for that reason, I agree with Rick Perlstein that, in terms of politics, we still live in Nixonland.    However, the current political situation with the far right Tea Party is such that it is increasing that fracturing, not decreasing it.

I sometimes wonder what it would take to create any consensus in this country, liberal or otherwise.    I honestly don’t know… as the blogger Driftglass who podcasts at The Professional Left once said:   human beings are the prisoners of our imaginations.  We grieve for the future we can imagine but not touch, or for golden ages that are no more–and never were.

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1.  Introduction

The first out of four stakeholder management-related project management processes is in the Initiating Process Group; this process is the second of the four processes, and is the one in the Planning Process group.    The purpose of this post is to give the inputs, tools & techniques, and outputs of this process 13.2, Plan Stakeholder Management, the main object of which is to a) analyze the engagement level of the stakeholders identified in process 13.1 Identify Stakeholders and b) create a Stakeholder Management Plan to manage and control that engagement level of stakeholders throughout the project.

2.  Inputs

There are several inputs to the stakeholder management plan.  The stakeholder register is an output of the previous stakeholder management process, 13.1 Identify Stakeholders.  Information from several subsidiary plans of the overall project management plan, such as the scope, change, human resources, and communications management plan, are helpful in analyzing the engagement level of stakeholders.  The company culture (part of EEFs) will point the way towards determining the best options to support a better adaptive process for making stakeholders.

Finally, if similar projects have been done in the past, then rather than reinventing the wheel, one can gain crucial insight on stakeholder management on the current project by seeing how it was handled on previous, similar projects with the understanding that some stakeholders, and their engagement levels, may have changed since then.

3.  Tools & Techniques

Stakeholder analysis is so important that a wide variety of experts are consulted to help analyze the actual level and the desired level of engagement level of the various stakeholders.  These experts are the same ones that were consulted in the previous process to a) identify the stakeholders and b) analyze their interest and/or influence on the project in order to determine the general strategy for engaging them.

Meetings and analytic techniques are also used to conduct this analysis.    These analytic techniques will be describe in detail in one of the subsequent posts.

4.  Outputs

The main output of this process is the Stakeholder Management Plan, which identifies management strategies required to effectively engage stakeholders.  The results of the analysis of the stakeholder engagement level is then added to the stakeholder register.  Activities that are required to effectively engage stakeholders are explicitly added to the project schedule.

5.  Conclusion

Before going on to discuss the next process 13.3 Manage Stakeholder Engagement, I will first discuss a) what goes into the Stakeholder Management Plan (the main output of this process 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Management), and a further, more detailed look into the tools & techniques of this process, namely, the analysis of stakeholder engagement levels.

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1.  Introduction

The first out of four stakeholder management-related project management processes is in the Initiating Process group, and is the process which identifies the stakeholders on the project even before the detailed planning stage of the project.  It not only identifies the stakeholders, but analyzes the relationships with them and what their level of engagement or interest in the project is and what their level of influence on the project is.  Both of these factors together determine what strategy to use when engaging them throughout the course of the project.

2.  Identifying Stakeholders

A stakeholder is an individual, group or organization which may affect or be affected by the outcome of a project.   One way to identify stakeholders is consider three categories of stakeholders.    The first category of stakeholders to be considered are those within the project, i.e., the project team. The second category of stakeholders are those outside of the project, but within the organization. This group includes the sponsor, functional managers, and organizational groups. Then there is the third category that are outside of the organization. This group includes business partners, sellers or suppliers, customers or users, government regulators and possibly other entities as well.

So stakeholders may not necessarily be involved in the project, but their interests may be affected by the project either positively or negatively. It is important to take the negative stakeholders into account on a project. A local environmental group could be considered a negative stakeholder for a new refinery project for example, because they could protest against the project. A government regulatory authority might also be a negative stakeholder if the new project is found not to conform to governmental regulations.

Now there is a diagram of all the stakeholders in the 5^th edition PMBOK® Guide page 31. The diagram was complete in that it listed all of the categories of stakeholders; however, it was a bit confusing because it lumped together all of the stakeholders that were external to the project itself, whether they were within the company or outside of it.

I think my way of dividing the stakeholders into three groups, internal to the project, internal to the organization, and external to the organization, is perhaps a bit better in helping understand how the various stakeholders can affect a project.

3.  Stakeholder Groups–expanded view

For an expanded view of these three groups, take a look at the following diagram representing categories of stakeholders on a project. The center circle in purple represents those stakeholders internal to the project that are actually working on the project itself. Those three circles outside of that in various shades of blue represent those stakeholders outside of the project, but within the organization; these include the sponsor, the program/portfolio managers, the functional managers and the managers of ongoing operations at an organization. The third category comprises the outer two circles in different shades of green which represent those stakeholders that are outside the organization: sellers, business partners, customers/users, and then regulatory agencies. There is a detailed explanation of each circle of stakeholders below the diagram.

Fig. 1. Categories of Stakeholders on a Project

1. The innermost circle is that of the people actually working on the project, namely the Project Manager, the Project Management Team (the other members of the team that assist with the management of the project), and the Project Team members who actually do the work.
2. The second circle is that of the Sponsor, the person or group that provides the financial resources for the project and the one who champions the project within the organization when it is first conceived. The Sponsor acts as a spokesperson to higher levels of management within the organization, which is why I placed the Sponsor in the second circle.
3. The third circle contains those higher-level organizers of projects, such as the program manager, who manages related projects in a coordinated way, and a portfolio manager, who manages a collection of projects or programs which may not be related in content, but which all serve the business model of the organization at large. I put them in this circle because they monitor the performance of the project and can even terminate it if the business case for the project no longer holds.
4. The next circle is still within the organization, but rather than the three inner circles that deal with project work, this circle represents the interests of the ongoing operational work, with the functional managers in charge of areas such as human resources, finance, accounting, and procurement. Depending on the type of organization, project managers will have to negotiate with them to allow their staff with expertise that would assist the project to work on that project for its duration. The operations management people will have to be consulted during the course of the project, because the project when completed is often handed off to them on account of the fact that they take care of normal operations and will provide long term support for the result of the project.
5. Now we get to the circle which is outside of the organization, but one in which there is a business relationship between the organization and that stakeholder, such as business partners that may have a financial interest in the project, sellers/suppliers in the case of a B2B relationship, customers/users in the case of a B2C relationship
6. The last circle consists of elements of society that may not have any formal relationship to the organization, but which may contain groups that are affected by the project or that can influence the project. The PMBOK® Guide labels this group generically as “Other Stakeholders”, but I have put an example of “Regulatory Agencies” as just one type of entity that could be considered a stakeholder. A non-governmental organization such as an environmental awareness group that is an NGO would also be an example of a stakeholder at this level.

These concentric circles, I believe, show a little more of the different kinds of stakeholders and why some of them have more influence than others. I found this diagram helpful for our group to gain awareness of the different types of stakeholders, and I hope that it is helpful for those studying for the PMP exam as well.

4.  Inputs of 13.1 Identify Stakeholders

The inputs come from the project charter, which can identify some of the parties related to the project, as well as procurement documents, since suppliers are one category of stakeholders.    EEFs can draw upon experience in the industry at large, and OPAs can draw upon the company’s own past experience on previous projects.

5.   Tools & Techniques of 13.1 Identify Stakeholders

Once the main categories of stakeholders are identified by the inputs (from project charter and stakeholder documents, in addition to stakeholder registers from previous, similar projects), the complete list of stakeholders can be rounded out by means of expert judgement from various sources internal to the organization (e.g., upper management) and external to the organization (e.g., industry associations, consultants, or SMEs in the project application area).

Once a complete list of stakeholder is obtained, the main tool of stakeholder analysis is used to figure out how much power or influence each stakeholder has on the outcome of the project, and also their interest in the outcome of the project.   In general terms, each stakeholder will have relatively high or low power, and high or low interest in the project.    The intersection of these two factors yields the matrix below.

Those stakeholders with low power, and low interest are put on a watch list, to see if they change during the course of the project.   Those with low interest, but high power are kept informed; those with high interest, and low power are kept satisfied; those with high power AND high interest are managed or engaged closely throughout the project.

This matrix has some visual affinity with the risk matrix, with certain events having low or high impact, and low or high probability.    There is also some conceptual affinity, because in a way a stakeholder can also impact a project in the same way that an event can, both in potentially positive AND negative ways.   The first level of stakeholder analysis then is to give a broad qualitative analysis of the stakeholder’s power and interest so that the broad strategy of engagement can be determined.

6.   Outputs of 13.1 Identify Stakeholders

The identification of stakeholders goes into the Stakeholder Register, which then includes the classification of the stakeholder (see paragraph 3 above with the concentric categories of stakeholders described), and then the assessment of the stakeholder which is the results of the stakeholder analysis done in the project.    Analogous to the way that the risk register is elaborated in subsequent risk management processes, the stakeholder register is elaborated in subsequent stakeholder management processes.

The next post goes into the first detailed planning process involving stakeholder management, process 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Management which has, as its objective, the production of the Stakeholder Management Plan.   

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1.  Introduction

Stakeholders can, literally, make or break a project, either by their support for a project or by their interference in a project.  The cost of making a change based on a request by a stakeholder goes up throughout the project, so it is important to prevent changes by engaging the stakeholders as early as possible.  That is why Identify Stakeholders is the only other process to be in the Initiating Process Group other than Create Project Charter, meaning that is undertaken even before the formal planning process starts.

Because PMI is placing increasing emphasis on Stakeholder Management, it has elevated it from being just a part of Communications Management to its own knowledge area outright.  This is because communicating with a stakeholder is not enough; you have to influence the stakeholder.  I say “influence” because you will not be in a position with some stakeholders to be a position of authority to coerce them, and have to rely on other forms of “soft power” or influence to be able to get them to do what you want them to do.

2.  Stakeholder Management Processes

There are four project management processes in the Procurement Management Knowledge Area.  One is in Initiating Process Group, process 13.1 Identify Stakeholders.  It is the only process other than 4.1 Create Project Charter to be in that group, which shows its importance and urgency when conducting a project, if it needs to be done even BEFORE planning the project formally starts.

The second one is the Planning Process Group, 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Management, which sets up the Stakeholder Management Plan, the guideline for all of the other stakeholder processes.  The third one is in the Executing Process Group, 13.3 Manage Stakeholder Engagement, which takes place throughout the project, and if any adjustments to that engagement are needed in the course of the project, 13.4 Control Stakeholder Management comes into play.

Here is a chart outlining the contents of the four processes devoted to Stakeholder Management:

The next post will discuss the inputs, tools & techniques, and outputs of the first process, 13.1 Identify Stakeholders.

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1.  Introduction

There are four procurement-related project management processes, one in each of the following process groups:  planning, executing, monitoring & controlling, and closing.  The fourth process is therefore in the Closing Group, and is the process which manages the formal closing of the procurement as per the contract between the buyer and seller.

This post is devoted to the Inputs, Tools & Techniques, and the Outputs of this third of the four procurement processes, 12.4 Close Procurements.

2.  Inputs

The Procurement Management Plan contains the guidelines for closing out procurements. The procurement documents contain project and financial information that should tell whether the requirements set forth in the procurement contract have been followed.

2.  Tools & Techniques

Just like the Quality Assurance which review the processes of the project as a whole, there can be procurement audits for the review of just the procurement process.

If there are any outstanding issues at the end of the procurement process, the negotiation process is the first way of settling them, followed by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods such as arbitration and mediation involving third parties.  Only in the last resort do the buyer and seller resort to the courts (litigation) to settle the matter.

3.  Outputs

Once the requirements of the procurement contract have been recognized by the buyer to have been achieved by the seller, the buyer then sends formal written notice to the seller that the contract has been completed, and the OPAs are then updated for reference on future projects.

This process is the only other project management process besides Close Phase or Project that is in the Closing Process Group.

This concludes the review of the four processes of Chapter 12 Procurement Management.  The next chapter is the last chapter of the PMBOK® Guide, Chapter 13 Stakeholder Management, and the next post will give an overview of the processes belonging to that knowledge area.

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This post is dedicated to the blogger Driftglass, the head of the Science Fiction University segment on the Professional Left Podcast, which has re-kindled my love of science fiction.    

There are a lot of people writing about the history of Labor Day, including this excellent column by Paul Krugman called Love for Labor Lost.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/opinion/krugman-love-for-labor-lost.html?_r=0

The purpose of this post is to look at Labor Day through the lens of science fiction, in particular, the movie The Time Machine based on the science fiction novella written by H. G. Wells in 1895.    I saw the 1960 version of the movie directed by George Pal on Friday evening, just because it was a movie that I hadn’t seen for a long time and wanted to watch again for nostalgia’s sake.

However, yesterday I reflected on the fact that it was Labor Day weekend and thought back on the movie I had seen earlier that weekend.    In the movie, the book’s protagonist, a British inventor, invents a time machine and uses it to explore the future.    He visits the year 802,701 A.D. , where he meets the Eloi, a society of child-like adults that live an idyllic existence without apparently having to do any work.    This first positive appraisal of the society is followed by the realization on the part of the protagonist that these people also do not seem to have any curiosity or any ambition.    But where does their clothing come from?   Where does their food come from?    They seem too unambitious to have produced it themselves …

Despite these questions about how their society functions, he decides to leave them in disgust at the degenerate state of mankind, when he finds that his time travel machine is missing.    It had apparently been dragged inside of a building whose facade resembled that of a Sphinx.     In trying to recover his time machine, he encounters a race of ape-like troglodytes called Morlocks.   The building he found is the entrance to an underground lair where the Morlocks live.    There he finds the machinery which apparently manufactures the clothing and produces the food upon which the Eloi depend.    What do the Morlocks get in return for this service to the Eloi.    There, he finds that the Eloi ARE the food upon which the Morlocks depend.    They exist not as enemies but in a symbiotic relationship, where one group depends on the other for its existence.

They both are descendants of the human race, where the middle class has disappeared, and the capitalist system we have now has devolved in a feudal system where there is only an upper class, an elite, and the working class.    These groups have then evolved, or devolved I should say, to the point where the two classes have become, in fact, two different species.

In this science fiction story, H. G. Wells posits the question through the lens of science fiction, “what are the ultimate consequences to a society when its middle class starts to disappear?”   It is a question that some modern movies of science fiction are exploring, in the October 2012 movie Cloud Atlas, which looks at the question of the interplay between economic, social, and political inequality in six interlocked stories that take place in different time periods, and the recent release of the movie Elysium, about a future where the elite 1% live in luxury aboard a space station while the other 99% of humanity lives on a polluted, overcrowded Earth.

Another exploration of what might happen if the middle class disappears comes from the popularity of the fantasy series on HBO called Game of Thrones, based on the series of high-fantasy series of novels by George R. R. Martin.   It describes the intrigue between a series of kingdoms that are locked into a struggle for supremacy.    Fantasy novels usually portray some sort of variation on a feudal order of society and often include the harnessing of elemental forces by means of magic rather than by science.

In that wildly popular series, we may be looking not at a romanticized past, but at a possible future just as dystopic as the one portrayed in Elysium, where the middle class disappears and the only two classes left are the 1% elite, the equivalent of the medieval aristocracy, and the 99%, the equivalent of the medieval lower classes.    This is why Labor Day is important, because the modern middle class in the United States after World War II is the creation of many historical forces, one of which is the gains won by the labor movement in the first half of the 20th century.

Forgetting that past is dangerous, as Paul Krugman insists, and the reason why comes from an even stronger warning by the science-fiction visionaries of the past, such as H. G. Wells in The Time Machine, and those of today who continue in that tradition.

But will we listen?    That is truly an open-ended question …

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This series of posts take the Ken Wilber’s introduction to Integral Theory called A Brief History of Everything and discusses the 20 tenets concerning the concept of a holon and how they can be applied to the field of project management.   This post covers tenet #4.    I have been posting one tenet a week on Sundays in a event to cover the 20 tenets in some detail, at least as far as my understanding of them goes.

1.  Recap–definition of a holon

A holon is an entity which consists of components, and yet is itself a component of a larger whole. The reason for the introduction of the concept is that bridges the philosophical divide between those who think that reality is composed of isolated units (atomism) and those who think that it is composed of a large web of interconnected parts). The first two tenets are as follows:

2.  Recap of tenets #1-3

Tenet #1. Reality as a whole is not composed of things or processes, but of holons.

Holons must be considered from the standpoint of interacting with other holons on the same level, and with holons at higher levels (of which the holon is just a part) and lower levels (which comprise the parts of the holon).

Tenet #2 Holons display four fundamental capacities: The horizontal capacities of self-preservation, self-adaptation, and the vertical capacities of self-transcendence and self-dissolution.

Holons follow the dual rules of evolution when it comes to holons at the same level:    survival of the fittest (self-preservation) and survival of the fitting (self-adaptation).    Holons have the property of being able to evolve to the next highest level (self-transcendence), and they can also “devolve” into their component parts (self-dissolution).

Tenet #3 Holons emerge

As mentioned in Tenet #2, holons have the property of self-transcendence or evolution to the next highest level.    This is not just a higher degree of organization, but also involves emergent properties or differences in kind from the level below.

3.   Tenet #4

The fourth tenet is as follows:

Holons emerge holarchically.

Let’s unpack this statement.    Holons, as seen above, are units that are both wholes containing parts and parts of larger wholes.   This kind of concentric nesting of holons reminiscent of the Russian matroshka dolls is considered a holarchy.    In contrast, we see in an organizational chart the usual notion of a hierarchy where those people who work for a supervisor are listed in boxes below the supervisor.    Hierarchy is linear, not concentric like a holarchy.

One of the philosophical controversies about hierarchies is that many groups think of them as being authoritarian, with the person at the top adopting a sort of “”top-down” or, more colloquially, a “my way or the highway” approach to management.    One of the earlier critics of the authoritarian or “top-down” style of management was Douglas McGregor who in the 1960s at the MIT Sloan School of Management developed contrasting models of human motivation in the work place called Theory X and Theory Y.   Theory X was the “top-down” style of management, where a manager assumed that workers needed to be told what to do.  Theory Y was more of a “bottom-up” style of management, where a manager assumed that workers had the intelligence to be able to solve most of their problems themselves, and his role was more of a facilitator than a dictator.

In terms of Integral Theory, the difference between Theory X and Theory Y is that Theory X stands for a “dominator hierarchy” where one holon (the supervisor) totally controls the parts (the workers), which is a pathological or unhealthy form for an organization to take because it suppresses the creativity and initiative of its workers.    Theory Y, on the other hand, is a hierarchy in that there IS a supervisor of the workers.    However, the supervisor, rather than suppressing the growth of the parts (the workers), actually encourages that growth.    This, Ken Wilber, is actually a natural hierarchy or a holarchy.

Critics of the concept of a hierarchy in general come from the left side of the political spectrum, as they create a caricature of all hierarchies as being undesirable, as if they were all guilty of being authoritarian or fascist.    They propose instead what might be called in contrast to a hierachy a heterarchy, or linking among equal parts, rather than ranking among unequal levels.    In essence, this is a model with workers, but no supervisors.

As Ken Wilber likes to point out, this is a pathological form of organization as well, because while it does not suppress the creativity and initiative of the workers (the “parts” of an organization), it does suppress the natural leadership instincts of a worker who wants to become a leader.    Actual  real-life examples where organizations failed because of lack of leadership come from the communes on the left in the 1960s that collapsed because they consistently suppressed any notion of leadership as being oppressive.    The Occupy Wall Street movement similarly collapsed, among other reasons, because they consciously disavowed the very notion of their being leaders of their movement.

What Ken Wilber is saying is that in an organization, there are three states of holarchy, one healthy and two pathological:

• natural hierarchy or holarchy (where the holon at one level interacts well with the parts at a lower level)
• dominator hierarchy (where the holon at one level suppresses the parts at a lower level)
• heterarchy (where the parts at a lower level suppress the emergence of a holon at a higher level)

In political terms, the heterarchy and dominator hierarchy are pathologies of the left and right wing, respectively.    The point as far as project management is concerned is that you want, as a project manager, to encourage the creativity and growth of your team members.    However, if there is a crisis, and they turn to you for a quick decision, they need for you to be able to be a leader and make that decision in an effective and efficient manner.

To use what now probably borders on being  a politically incorrect idiom, there of course can be “too many chiefs and not enough Indians,” but an organization can also suffer if there are only Indians, but not enough chiefs.    The real point is that an organization is never a static thing like the neat boxes of an organization chart would have you believe; it is a dynamic, evolving entity and the way to have it evolve the fastest is for a project manager to have more of the “bottom-up” style of management rather than the “top-down” style of  management, which even in the Mad Men days of the 1960s Douglas McGregor of MIT’s Sloan School of Management thought of as being a dinosaur doomed to extinction.    His job was to hasten that extinction, and herald the coming of a style that promotes evolution within an organization.

The next post will cover tenet #5 of the 20 tenets introduced by Ken Wilber in his book A Brief Theory of Everything.   If you want to read more about Integral Theory, that is the best book for beginners to start.

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