Stakeholder management is one of the all-time most common project management topics — I’d argue that this and “scope” are the Big 2 — and there are lots of methods to tackle it. Today we’ll talk through the stakeholder management RACI model; it’s one of the most common models for analyzing stakeholders!
Stakeholder management will definitely come up once you start integrating PM into your professional life; one of the most common topics for PM professional development sessions is stakeholder management, and one of the most common questions to ask in a project management interview is some variation of “how do you manage stakeholders?”
And really, as someone currently working in higher ed, this is to your advantage! Stakeholder management isn’t a throwaway question; it’s incredibly applicable to working as a project manager, which ALSO means it’s probably something you’re already doing. There are also a lot of “right” answers (which is always my favorite kind of question). So let’s start a series looking at a couple different ways to analyze (and then manage) stakeholders!
I’ve selected these because they’re the most common methods you’ll see in PM education — which means they’re great methods to have in your toolkit when you first start talking to others about how you use stakeholder management methods in your current position.
But I want to underscore: there are many, many ways to do this… you may even come up with your own model as you dig into project management work! These methods are a solid foundation to get you started in the right direction.
Remember that the goal of stakeholder analysis is always to give yourself as the PM actionable next steps.
That means that the first steps, no matter what model you’re deciding to apply, are always the same:
From there, we have many different methods we can apply. Today, let’s take a look at the RACI method.
Some people find the RACI method to be a little simpler than the power/interest model, because it's just an acronym to remember how to categorize stakeholders.
R - Responsible. These are the folks who are responsible for completing the work. Let's look at two examples within higher ed: planning a Family Weekend, and implementing an academic advising CRM system.
In our Family Weekend example, responsible folks might be the coordinator and team of students working to plan, staff, and evaluate the program. In our academic advising example, this might be the committee selecting the software platforms to compare, scheduling demos, and working with IT to facilitate implementation. In both examples, these are the folks without whom the work doesn't get done.
A - Accountable. These are the people who are "on the hook" for "owning" the work. There's often overlap between responsible and accountable parties, but the accountable group is smaller.
So in our Family Weekend example, the accountable parties are the coordinator and perhaps that coordinator's director. (Who will the Dean of Students come after if the program goes off the rails; who will get the shout-out in a divisional meeting when it goes well?)
In our advising CRM example, this might be the director of the academic advising office.
C - Consulted. These are the people who need to be consulted because of some level of expertise (or, hearkening back to our power/interest model, because they have very high degrees of both power over and interest in the project). They don't perform the work on a day-to-day basis (so they're not in the Responsible umbrella), and they're not ultimately the owner of the project (so they're not in the Accountable umbrella).