The importance of stakeholders for project success: the C-NOMIS case study

(This is part 3 of a series of 10 posts: Why projects fail?)

This article deals with the third of the OGC's eight causes of project failure: insufficient or ineffective engagement with project stakeholders.

Individuals and groups who are not part of the project management team, but who need to interact with the project or may be affected by the project's outcome, are known as stakeholders. Stakeholders can potentially gain or lost as a result of project delivery, and as a consequence may support or oppose the project. The extent to which a stakeholder sees the project as a threat or an enhancement to their own position or organisation affects how actively that stakeholder supports or blocks the project and its progress.

Identifying and effectively communicating with influential project stakeholders is crucial, to ensure a full understanding of the need for the project, the benefit that the project is expected to bring and the project's business justification. Regular and transparent communication fosters stakeholder confidence in the project management team, and enables stakeholders to raise immediately any concerns that may develop.

According to the report issue by the NAO, the engagement of this C-NOMIS project management team with its key stakeholders was erratic, to say the least.

At the start of the project, user groups were identified and encouraged to participate in workshops that would determine the specification, goals and even the overall direction of the project. The requirements of the product (the C-NOMIS database intended to capture and share information about offenders required by the prison and probation services) were therefore extremely comprehensive - so comprehensive, in fact, that they encouraged 'scope creep' (the extension of product requirements beyond the scope defined in the project Business Case.

Having started off with good intentions, the C-NOMIS project management team did not continue quite as might have been hoped. Not only was there little information passed from project to stakeholders regarding the spiralling costs and the increasingly delayed deadline for project completion, but a number of stakeholders informed the NAO that they had felt unsure how to notify the C-NOMIS project management team of their own concerns. It is not surprising that C-NOMIS gradually lost the support of its stakeholders.
Summary and solutions

The OGC's Managing Successful Programmes (MSP), recommends a 6-step process for stakeholder engagement:

1. Identify who the stakeholders are, so that communication strategies can be appropriately focused.
2. Evaluate the interest, attitude and influence of the stakeholder.
3. Write a stakeholder engagement strategy, including the content, format and frequency of communication, as well as the designated sender(s) and recipient(s).
4. Plan when and how the stakeholder engagement strategy will take place.
5. Implement the stakeholder engagement strategy (communicate the required information)
6. Monitor the effectiveness of the strategy, but ensuring that all the key stakeholders have the information that they require and are satisfied with their position in relation to the project.

Stakeholders outside of an organisation are generally handled at the level of corporate or programme management. However, it is important for project managers to understand and engage in stakeholder communications - as the C-NOMIS report demonstrates, insufficient or ineffective channels of communication can reduce confidence in the project, and even impact on project success.
Looking ahead ...

The failure of senior and project management staff to effectively engage with the project stakeholders was one of the reasons that C-NOMIS turned into such a costly disaster. In my next post I am going to look at the fourth of the OGC causes of project failure - a poor approach to project and risk management.