The Stakeholder Management questions on the PgMP^® certification exam, which constitute 16% of the exam, or 27 questions, focus on the importance of stakeholder identification, management, and engagement throughout the program’s life cycle and even when the program is first being proposed. They also emphasize the link between stakeholders and effective communications, since communications is the key competency for program managers, and so much of the program manager’s time is spent in communications given the large and diverse numbers of stakeholders on programs. Therefore, other questions focus on communications planning and distributing information to stakeholders in the format needed, at the desired frequency, and with the desired level of detail.

Throughout the program, stakeholders will have different levels of influence and interest in the program at different phases of the life cycle. A stakeholder analysis, therefore, is essential and is ongoing. The program manager and his or her core them must work diligently with some stakeholders, who may not be program supporters, to gain their confidence and turn them into advocates for the program. A stakeholder matrix is a useful tool to prepare and maintain.

Stakeholder engagement is essential for program success and is a way to generate and maintain program visibility. As a result, defining communications needs for different types of stakeholders and providing it as required also promotes their support for the program.

While the Examination Content Outline titles this domain as Stakeholder Management, The Standard for Program Management—Third Edition (2013) calls the domain Stakeholder Engagement recognizing that stakeholders cannot be managed but instead only stakeholder expectations can be managed. This domain in the Standard has three key activities: Program Stakeholder Identification, Stakeholder Engagement Planning, and Stakeholder Engagement. From the Standard, in the Supporting Processes, Program Communication Management is another area of focus in terms of Communications Planning and Information Distribution.

Following is a list of the major topics covered in Stakeholder Management. Use this list to focus your study efforts on the areas that are the most likely to appear on the exam.

Importance of Stakeholder Management

• Definition of a stakeholder
• Types of stakeholders—internal and external
• Customer engagement management
• Bridging the gap between the “as is” to the “to be” state
• Necessity in terms of organizational change

Program Stakeholder Identification

• Identifying stakeholders
• Types of stakeholders
• Stakeholder register
• Stakeholder matrix
• Stakeholder analysis
• Prioritized list of stakeholders

Stakeholder Engagement Planning

• Collecting information about stakeholders
• Stakeholder engagement plan
• Negotiating stakeholder support
• Metrics to measure performance of stakeholder engagement activities
• Guidelines for components

Stakeholder Engagement

• Ensuring stakeholders are adequately and appropriately engaged
• Generating and maintaining visibility of the program
• Confirming stakeholder support
• Evaluating risks identified by stakeholders
• Developing and fostering stakeholder relationships
• Capturing issues and information
• Using communication, negotiating, and conflict resolution skills
• Using an issue log
• Prioritization mechanisms
• Addressing issues and concerns
• Stakeholder metrics

Program Communications Management

• Differences from project communications management
• Communications skills
• Influencing skills

Communications Planning

• Determine stakeholder information and communication needs
• Define communications requirements
• Cultural and language differences
• Working with virtual teams
• Communication methods
• Program communications plan

Information Distribution

• Providing stakeholders with timely and accurate information
• Information channels
• Status information
• Notification of change requests
• Budget information—internal and external
• Government and regulatory filings
• Public announcements and press releases
• Media information and benefit updates
• Types of communications methods

Communication Considerations

• Communication and presentation skills
• Defined and documented strategy for communications requirements

Information Gathering and Retrieval Systems

• Different media
• Using data bases
• Storage and retrieval systems

Information Distribution Methods

• Communicating required information to stakeholders in a timely way
• Face-to-face meetings
• Electronic communications and conferencing tools
• Electronic program management tools
• Social media
• Informal communications
• Keeping information in the program’s control

Lessons Learned Data Base

• Acquiring lessons learned
• Using lessons learned to develop the communications management plan
• Updating lessons learned
• PMIS
• Data archiving and retrieval instructions

Program Performance Reporting

• Providing information on resource use to deliver benefits
• Communication as a two-way flow
• Using information distribution

1. As the program manager to develop a new source of energy that can be used in the northern and southern hemispheres when solar power is not readily available, you have a large number of stakeholders, both internal and external. You also are working with a virtual team, and many team members represent different cultures. You recognize since you are the program manager the importance of keeping all of your stakeholders informed in a timely manner by distributing various types of information. One piece of information that stakeholders need but that is often overlooked by program managers is a—
   1. Receipt of proposals
   2. Notification of responses to change requests
   3. List of preventive actions
   4. Record of training
2. You are working on a complex five-year program that has a minimum of four projects under way at any given time. A major scope change to Project L has resulted in a need to rebaseline its schedule. Consequently, because of dependencies with Project L, Project D also had to revise its schedule. You have informed your Governance Board and key stakeholders about the revisions. Some stakeholders have asked questions regarding the rebaselining. Your next step is to—
   1. Capture and publish questions and answers
   2. Ask the project managers to meet with their key stakeholders
   3. Hold meetings with key stakeholder groups to listen to their concerns an answer questions
   4. Follow your defined communications strategy
3. The president of your company has selected you to be the head of all eLearning and has asked that you launch a program to develop new media for delivering your company’s content. The program has a number of stakeholders, some of whom are supportive and some of whom are skeptical, and you anticipate many debates concerning the program’s objectives. As the program manager, you recognize that you need to rely on—
   1. Leadership skills
   2. Conflict resolution skills
   3. Environmental awareness skills
   4. Diplomatic skills
4. As program manager for all eLearning in your company, BBB, you are launching your program to develop new media for delivering your company’s course content. You have a diverse group of stakeholders, and your program has active involvement by BBB’s Chief Executive Officer. As the program manager, you must ensure the performance data on your eLearning program are consolidated and routed to the intended recipients to provide a clear picture of overall program performance and especially to show how resources, which already are constrained in BBB, are being used effectively. This is done through—
   1. Targeted communications messaging
   2. Information distribution
   3. Program performance and status reports prepared in reporting program performance
   4. Stakeholder engagement as identified in the stakeholder management strategy
5. As the program manager to develop a new source of energy that can be used in the northern and southern hemispheres when solar power is not readily available, you have a large number of stakeholders, both internal and external. You also are working with a virtual team, and many team members represent different cultures. You have eight projects so far in your program and are in the planning phase. This means in regard to project and program communications with your stakeholders you should be—
   1. Determining who needs to be receiving the communications and when
   2. Distributing communications messages to stakeholders
   3. Implementing the feedback loops developed earlier in the program
   4. Building your communications infrastructure
6. On your program, you have identified over 50 internal and external stakeholders, and have three projects in your program. You are providing regular updates on the status and specific requirements of your program to these stakeholders. A key focus in performance reporting is information on—
   1. Cost and schedule status
   2. Use of resources to deliver program benefits
   3. Issues to be discussed at program Governance Board meetings for decisions to move to the next phase
   4. Activities to determine whether specific work results have been completed
7. Meeting stakeholder expectations is vital to program success; therefore, participation of stakeholders must be monitored to ensure that their expectations are met. You are managing a large program with diverse stakeholder groups. On this program, you have found that you often need to—
   1. Meet one-on-one with each of the 200 stakeholders on the program
   2. Facilitate negotiation sessions between stakeholders
   3. Have your enterprise program management office (EPMO) take over responsibility for stakeholder expectations management
   4. Use your stakeholder analysis chart as a key tool and technique to assist in managing expectations
8. You have been managing a complex and major program in your company, BBB. Your program has 11 separate contracts and also two projects using in-house resources. Your team is a virtual, and because of budget constraints, you could not have a face-to-face meeting. Because of the large number of stakeholders to best address the urgency of their issues, you decide to—
   1. Hold a focus group
   2. Set up a prioritization mechanism
   3. Conduct an impact analysis
   4. Determine the frequency and rate of communications on the program
9. You are now conducting a phase-gate review with your Governance Board to determine if you can close the program. You and two of the Board members, who are not in the CEO’s inner circle, are having a disagreement as to whether the phase has been completed successfully, and your program can now advance to the closing process. One way this can be determined is to—
   1. Take a vote of the members of the program board
   2. Compare performance to date against the exit criteria for the phase
   3. Try to reach consensus among all stakeholders
   4. Use fact-based decision making
10. In the most recent program performance meeting as part of the program closeout phase, you reported that the earned value data were favorable, that all performance metrics were in line with stated criteria, and that stakeholder requirements were met. Yet several stakeholders reported that the program fell somewhat short of their expectations. You assert that the program is successful because it has met all objective criteria. Your assessment is—
    1. Incorrect. Expectations are as important as requirements.
    2. Incorrect. Although expectations should be considered, they are not as important as requirements.
    3. Correct. There is no difference between expectations and requirements.
    4. Correct. The stakeholders should have expressed their expectations as requirements during the requirements-gathering phase.
11. Recently, your City has been experiencing numerous power outages because of excessive heavy rainfall and numerous hurricanes. Many residents have purchased gas generators, but they tend to not last long enough so people are also purchasing generators that use propane. Your propane company has decided that it should set up a program that would be put in place to use natural gas instead. You are the manager for this program. You also have a large number of interested stakeholders, and they are monitoring your progress to see if this new natural gas approach will be ready before the next hurricane season. Your goal is to—
    1. Assess the degree to which the program satisfies needs and benefits
    2. Set clear stakeholder engagement goals
    3. Work to turn stakeholders who are negative about the program to be positive or at least neutral to it
    4. Communicate actively to your stakeholders as to your progress and your program’s benefits
12. You are the program manager on a highly controversial e-mail retention program for your company, AEI. More than 75 percent of the people in AEI are opposed to the program because they realize all of their e-mail messages will be archived. AEI management has informed everyone someone will review each e-mail to make sure it pertains to company business and is not a personal one. All e-mails are to be written in a professional way and must be ethical. You now have many conflicts as you and your team execute the five projects in your program. This program represents a major culture change for AEI as in the past it was common to discuss anything with anyone. Generally accepted methods of organizational change management are required for this program, and the person in charge of this change is—
    1. The program director
    2. The program sponsor
    3. The program Governance Board
    4. You, the program manager
13. As a program manager, you recognize the importance of stakeholder engagement. To support your efforts, especially with key stakeholders whose displeasure might hinder the program’s success, you prepare a stakeholder engagement plan You know that stakeholders must see the benefits of the program. Therefore, you need to have strong skills in—
    1. Strategic planning
    2. Leadership
    3. Enterprise resource management
    4. Customer relationship management
14. Each program has stakeholders. At the time you were appointed as program manager, you and your core team immediately identified 50 key stakeholders. Now the number of stakeholders has increased according to your stakeholder analysis to 88. You seem to feel as if all you do all day is communicate with stakeholders and have meetings with groups of them. As part of stakeholder engagement planning, you need to identify how the program will affect stakeholders in areas such as—
    1. The organization’s culture
    2. Management of operations
    3. Corporate governance
    4. Legal policies, standards, and regulations
15. When you worked as a project manager, you learned that most project managers spend about 90 percent of their time in communications. Now as a program manager you know you are spending almost 100% of your time in communications. It seems to never end. You have set presentations now for different groups of stakeholders but then you must continually update them to show progress, and new stakeholders seem to become interested in your progress as the program ensues. Communication planning in program management therefore focuses on—
    1. Reacting to stakeholder concerns
    2. Taking corrective actions in response to program issues
    3. Determining the information and communications needs of each stakeholder
    4. Identifying suitable technologies for distributing program information
16. You are the program manager responsible for implementing salesmagic.com, a highly complex but powerful tool for customer relationship management. You and your team have spent three days identifying the metrics against which you will measure stakeholder engagement activities. Your next step is to—
    1. Meet with key stakeholders to gain agreement
    2. Include the metrics in the stakeholder register
    3. Test the effectiveness of the metrics through a focus group
    4. Include the metrics in the stakeholder engagement plan
17. You are a program manager for a city transit authority. Your program has a number of projects under way to upgrade the infrastructure to current technologies and to implement a process improvement program. The transit authority’s chief financial officer (CFO) has left to assume a position in a different city, and a new person has been appointed CFO. You should—
    1. Update your stakeholder inventory
    2. Appoint one of your core team members to interact with the new CFO
    3. Meet with the new CFO to explain the importance of the program
    4. Update the stakeholder register
18. You are a program manager for a new line of children’s toys called The Destroyer. Your stakeholders—especially the members of your program Governance Board—have requested an analysis of any opportunities that can be leveraged as you collect and analyze performance on your program. Also, you want to identify any adverse impacts that must be corrected. After you prepare this information and consolidate it, you—
    1. Meet with your key stakeholders to inform them of your program’s progress according to their specific areas of interest
    2. Make the information available through the information distribution activity
    3. Follow the process outlined in your communications management plan
    4. Contact your Governance Board about any adverse trends that require immediate action to meet the required delivery date
19. Stakeholders play a critical role in the success of a program or project. As program manager for development of a next-generation motorcycle to be available in 2020, you know it is a best practice to determine a strategy to engage stakeholders. This should be done—
    1. During overall program planning
    2. While the business case for the program is made
    3. As the program is being initiated
    4. After the projects and other ongoing components of the program are determined
20. You are managing a program under contract with a major motion picture studio. The Statement of Work noted that you needed to interface with ten different groups of people within the studio. After your company, KSI, won this contract, you and your team recognized the importance of performing a detailed stakeholder analysis based on the Statement of Work. To conduct such an analysis, you plan to hold interviews, use focus groups, and perhaps conduct a survey. This approach enables you to—
    1. Develop a stakeholder communications strategy
    2. Prioritize stakeholders in terms of their ability to influence the program
    3. Develop a stakeholder register
    4. Identify stakeholders’ attitudes toward the program