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Okay, so you’ve been engaging the stakeholders with the tools and techniques of this process outlined in the last post.   The key result of this process will be change requests that the stakeholders make, usually to the project or product scope.    If these change requests are accepted, then these changes will require updates to the project management plan as well as to some key project documents.

All of these outputs are the subject of this post.

13.3.3  Manage Stakeholder Engagement:  Outputs

13.3.3.1  Change Requests

After engaging with stakeholders who may be resistant to the project, it is possible that they may suggest a change in the scope of the project or the product that the project is intended to create.   Of course, even those who are neutral or supportive of a project may come up with an idea to improve the project or product and these changes, too, should be considered.

Another suggestion for a change might be with the process of stakeholder engagement itself, namely, a request to receive information more frequently and/or in a different form than currently received.   These changes are also considered.

As with all change requests, they are reviewed in the process 4.6 Perform Integrated Change Control.   Once they are reviewed by the change control board or whatever mechanism your project has in place to review such changes, then the approved changes are made to the project management plan and key project documents (see next two paragraphs).

13.3.3.2  Project Management Plan

If the change requests mentioned in the last paragraph are approved, they may end up creating changes to the project scope, in which case they might change the scope baseline (see project documents updates paragraph below).   If they are changes to the process of stakeholder engagement itself, however, they might require updates to the following two components of the project management plan.

• Communications management plan–new or changed stakeholder requirements for communication may require updating this plan.
• Stakeholder engagement plan–if in the course of this process, new or changed management strategies are developed to effectively engage stakeholders, then these are updated in this plan.

Although not listed in the PMBOK® Guide explicitly, the fact that the Guide mentions that many of the change requests from stakeholders will be to the project and/or project scope, another important component  of the project management plan that may be updated as a result of this process is the following:

• Scope baseline–this consists of the project scope statement (where the requirements are broken down into the level of deliverables that fulfill these requirements), and the WBS and WBS dictionary (which further break down these deliverables to the operational level of work packages)

13.3.3.3  Project Document Updates

• Change log–any change requests may be made to the change log.   This is important because if a stakeholder makes a change request and it is not accepted by the change control board, it will be important to communicate the reasons for that decision to that stakeholder.
• Issue log–if an issue is brought up by a stakeholder, or if there are recent developments related to an issue brought up earlier by a stakeholder, then this is added to the issue log.
• Lessons learned register–if effective approaches to managing stakeholder engagement are discovered in the course of this process, these are added to the register.   Likewise ineffective approaches are mentioned so that they may be discontinued.  In either case, this information can be used in later stages of the current project.
• Stakeholder register–new information provided to stakeholders is added to the stakeholder register with regard to the following:
  • Resolved issues (see paragraph on “issue log” above)
  • Changes approved or not approved (see paragraph on “change log” above)
  • General project status

Every once and a while, it is important to take a step back and monitor the project stakeholder relationships and tailor your strategies to improve the engagement level with those stakeholders.   That is the purpose of the final process in this knowledge area, process 13.4 Monitor Stakeholder Engagement which is part of the monitoring and controlling process group.   We will cover the inputs to this process in the next post.

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