If you’re working on a project, it’s important to know how stakeholders feel about the goals and progress of that project in order to ensure the best possible outcome. Unfortunately, this information isn’t always easy to come by, as most stakeholders have their own busy schedules and other priorities which can make it difficult to sit down with them to discuss your project.
What is Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix?
The Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix can be helpful in determining who to engage with, how to engage them, and what kind of information or resources they may need. For example, early on there might not be much engagement needed because the scope of work has not been defined yet. However, as you progress through the design and implementation phases, more stakeholders will have their interests potentially impacted by the change initiative so it would be wise to engage more people earlier on rather than later.
It is a very useful project artifact while creating the communications management plan, and the stakeholder engagement plan. It is also beneficial for monitoring stakeholder engagement and communications.
Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix is likely to be used in the performance domains below;
The stakeholder engagement assessment matrix, or SEAM, is a decision-making tool that allows you to take stock of your project’s existing stakeholder relationships and plan how to best move forward with them based on the level of current engagement you’ve established with each group. A SEAM will help you choose which stakeholders to engage more deeply with, which ones to remove from your list of responsibilities, and which ones to work around in order to successfully complete your project on time and on budget.
Current and Desired Stakeholder States
The first step in using the matrix is to determine the current state of engagement for each stakeholder group. To do this, ask yourself how interested and invested each group is in the project. Then, rate their level of engagement on a scale from 1-5. Once you have done this, you can move on to determining the desired state of engagement. How involved would they like to be with the project? What are their goals? What challenges might they face that could impact these goals? If you want them to be more involved, what needs to happen? Should they be informed about the progress or should you involve them in decision-making? Are there any risks or opportunities that will affect this stakeholder group and need to be communicated early on?
It’s important to think about all of these questions before moving on to your next phase. You may want stakeholders who are already heavily engaged to get even more so while others may need less involvement as the project progresses. Think about where you are in the process and plan accordingly. For example, at the beginning of an initiative it’s a good idea to reach out to those groups that were traditionally not included but as you near completion it makes sense to provide additional updates only when necessary.