Massimo Pirozzi (Author) - The Stakeholder Perspective-Relationship Management To Increase Value and Success Rates of Projects-Taylor & Francis (2019)

The Stakeholder
Perspective
The Stakeholder
Perspective
Relationship Management
to Increase Value and Success
Rates of Projects
By Massimo Pirozzi
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
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Contents
Foreword.............................................................................. vii
Preface................................................................................... xi
Acknowledgments.............................................................. xv
About the Author.............................................................. xvii
Part I THE STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVE

1 Stakeholders, Who Are They?...................................3
2 The Recent Central Role of Stakeholders
in Project Management...........................................19
3 Stakeholder Identification: Integrating
Multiple Classification and
Behavioral Models..................................................31
4 Effective Stakeholder Analysis:
A Systemic Approach..............................................45
5 Key Stakeholders Management: Principles
of Effective Direct Communication.........................53
6 Stakeholder Network Management:
Informative and Interactive Communication..........73
7 Basic Personal and Interpersonal Skills:
Personal Mastery, Leadership, Teaming.................85
8 Ethics in Stakeholder Relations..............................97
v
vi ◾ Contents
Part II THE RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT PROJECT

9 Stakeholder Relations and Delivered Value:
An Indissoluble Link............................................105
10 Satisfying Stakeholder Requirements and
Expectations: The Critical Success Factor............113
11 Facing Successfully Different Levels
of Project Complexity........................................... 119
12 Targeting Both Project and Business Value
Generation by Using KPIs....................................129
13 Relationship Management Project:
A Structured Path to Effectiveness.......................139
14 New Stakeholder-Centered Trends:
Project Management X.0....................................... 147
References................................................................... 153
Index........................................................................... 159
Foreword
Stakeholders, those who influence or care about something,

is such a simple concept. Yet it has taken nearly 50 years
for those involved with planning and managing projects to
fully understand the importance of stakeholders to project
management. In recent years, stakeholder management has
been added to project management standards, guides, and
best practices. The topic has grown to include a wide range
of stakeholder engagement-related activities and processes;
it is the subject of numerous books, articles, reports, and
studies. Stakeholder engagement, or stakeholder management,
is included in most project management plans, systems, and
approaches today. However, I don’t think its importance is yet
fully appreciated.
Project stakeholders include the individuals and organiza-
tions that plan, finance, implement, oversee, and complete
every project. They include shareholders, customers, users,
and anyone who benefits from a project. And they often
include those affected by a project, including neighbors,
government regulators, and many citizens. In my opinion,
stakeholder attitudes, expectations, and perceptions may be
the most important aspect of managing any project, more
important than scope, schedule, cost, or anything else. Of
course, all the standard elements of project management are
important, but without the satisfaction of key stakeholders, a
project cannot be successful.
vii
viii ◾ Foreword
Perhaps the best-known example of this was the project

to build the Sydney Opera House in Australia. The project
far exceeded original scope, cost and time estimates; it was a
failure by nearly all established measures. Yet it became one of
the most iconic and popular buildings in the world. The com-
pleted project was loved by its most important stakeholders—
the people who saw and visited it. Not only was it a unique
and beautiful building, but it also helped attract millions of
visitors to Sydney who have contributed hundreds of millions
of dollars to the local economy. It was a fantastic success for
one main reason—stakeholders!
Like many other simple concepts, however, effective
project stakeholder engagement is not so easy. Organizing and
working with other human beings can always be a challenge.
Dealing with many different groups of people can be compli-
cated and difficult. In fact, large and diverse sets of stakehold-
ers are now widely recognized as a major element of project
complexity. It is sometimes difficult to even identify all project
stakeholders, let alone understand their attitudes, expectations,
and perceptions. In fact, some stakeholders might not know
how they feel about a project, which can be both a challenge
and an opportunity for project managers. Some may not even
know they are project stakeholders; when that awareness
comes, however, some can become very important stake-
holders indeed—for example, those who may be negatively
affected by the project or the product of the project. Project
managers (and project sponsors) ignore those stakeholders at
their own peril.
Stakeholder engagement is a critical success factor for
every project. Stakeholder identification, analysis, engage-
ment, communications, and relationship management should
be a major aspect of managing every project. Of course, these
issues also apply to program and project portfolio manage-
ment. It is not necessarily easy, but it is not mysterious either.
It is just very important!
Foreword ◾ ix
This book is an evidence about Massimo Pirozzi’s under-

standing of the importance of stakeholders to project suc-
cess. It also goes beyond other books on this topic in several
significant areas. Stakeholder networks are introduced, the
use of interpersonal skills in interacting with stakeholders is
explained, and the important topics of ethics and value cre-
ation in stakeholder relations are emphasized. The relationship
of stakeholders and project complexity is discussed at length
and a process for successful stakeholder engagement to over-
come that complexity is provided. In our rapidly changing and
increasingly complex world, the probability of project success
can be dramatically increased with the use of the concepts
contained in this book.
Massimo has demonstrated his commitment to stakeholders
throughout his career, and in his professional leadership and
recent writings. Now he is sharing more of his understanding
and knowledge with the rest of us. I am honored to author
this foreword. I feel even more honored due to the importance
of this topic. Please read this book. It’s great! Then put it to
good use.
David L. Pells
Editor/Publisher
PM World Journal, PM World Library
PMI Fellow, Honorary Fellow of ISIPM (Italy),
APM (UK), PMA (India), SOVNET (Russia)
Addison, Texas, USA
Preface
This book focuses on the centrality of people—the stake

holders, in both projects and project management. In short, this
centrality is because stakeholders are both the doers, and the
beneficiaries, of each project, and, therefore, they contribute
to projects’ success in all respects: moreover, stakeholders are,
at the same time, the greatest generators both of the value to
be delivered, and of the complexity to be faced and solved.
Since, despite the recent improvements due to the increasing
maturity in project management of the organizations—which
are, in any case, partially counterbalanced by the continuously
increasing complexity of projects, there is still an actual situa-
tion, in which important percentages of projects do not meet
their original goals/business intents, i.e., they do not satisfy
their stakeholders’ expectations, and/or, moreover, they experi-
ence scope creeps, cost overruns, and time delays, i.e., they
do not correspond to initial project/stakeholder requirements
too, a further attention to stakeholders and to stakeholder rela-
tionships domain is absolutely appropriate in order to improve
performances, especially in large and/or complex projects.
The purpose of this book is, therefore, to propose to
the project management community, a helpful, innovative,
stakeholder-centered approach, to increase both the delivered
value and the success rate in projects of all size and complexity:
this approach is declined in a logical model, which is
called the “Stakeholder Perspective”, and then, it is structured,
xi
xii ◾ Preface
in order to be more effective, in an immediately manage-

able “project in the project”, which is called “the Relationship
Management Project”. Ultimately, an additional purpose of
this book is to provide a consistent, complete but synthetic,
updated focus on both stakeholder concepts and stakeholder
identification/analysis/management processes. Above focus,
which can also be considered as a deepening and/or an inte-
gration of the existing literature about stakeholder manage-
ment, on the one hand, includes several innovative issues but,
on the other hand, maintains a strict coherence with project
management international standards and best practices.
The innovative stakeholder-centered journey toward the
increase of the projects’ effectiveness, efficiency, and success
rate, which is proposed in this book, is structured in two
parts. Part I looks into the stakeholder perspective in both
projects and project management, starting with the investiga-
tion about the nature and the role of the stakeholders, then
deepening, and integrating with some significant innovations,
the domains of project management processes that focus on
stakeholders, including stakeholder identification, stakeholder
analysis, management of the relationships with key stake
holders, and stakeholder network management, to conclude
with an overview about those personal and interpersonal
skills, and ethics, which are basic in stakeholder relationships.
Part II explores several innovative issues, starting with the
indissoluble link between stakeholder relations and delivered
value, and with the satisfaction of both stakeholder require-
ments and expectations as the critical success factor in all
projects, then proceeding with facing successfully different
levels of project complexity, and with targeting both proj-
ect and business value generation by using KPIs, in order to
definitively propose an innovative structured path to effective-
ness called Relationship Management Project. Finally, in the
last chapter, some innovative cues about Project Management X.0,
a possible stakeholder-centered evolution for both project and
portfolio management, are provided for the reader’s attention.
Preface ◾ xiii
The above contents are proposed in the light format of a

guide, with the purpose of being more easily readable and
usable: furthermore, in order to enhance immediate appli-
cability, almost all contents that are contained in this guide,
including innovative issues and models, should be considered
as actual, because they are the results of direct experiences
and/or observations.
Finally, since we are all stakeholders, this book is dedicated
to all of us.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Russ D. Archibald, a globally recognized

author, consultant and lecturer on project management, and to
Alan Stretton, one of the pioneers of modern project manage-
ment, for their several positive commentaries about my previ-
ous research works, which encouraged me greatly to proceed
with this book.
Many thanks also to my friend David L. Pells, real project
management globalist, especially for having been my first
international editor, who immediately believed in my research
work.
Several thanks to the members of my Project Management
Association, the Istituto Italiano di Project Management
(ISIPM), which first gave me the opportunity, about 5 years
ago, to present in a 3-hour seminar the results of my first
researches on stakeholders: special thanks to my friends and
fellow travelers in project management, Enrico Mastrofini,
Graziano Trasarti, Vito Introna, Maurizio Monassi, and Biagio
Tramontana, mostly for all the great job made together, to
Federico Minnelle, for having always been a real scientific ref-
erence, and to my friend Alessandro Quagliarini, particularly
for his encouragements to become a teacher, which today is
my principal work.
Thanks to all over thousand people I directly dealt with in
my professional life, both as a manager and as a teacher, for
xv
xvi ◾ Acknowledgments
having made real all the experiences, both positive and nega-
tive, which are the basis of this book.
The greatest thanks to my awesome wife Antonella, my
prime supporter, and to my fantastic sons Paolo and Marco,
especially for their continuous closeness, which has been
foundational for me to write this book.
About the Author
Massimo Pirozzi, MSc (cum

laude), Electronic Engineering,
University of Rome “La
Sapienza”, principal consultant,
project manager, lecturer and
educator. He is a member and
the secretary of the Executive
Board, a member of the
Scientific Committee, and an
accredited master teacher of
the Istituto Italiano di Project Management (Italian Institute
of Project Management). He is certified as a professional
project manager, as an information security management
systems lead auditor, and as an international mediator. He
is a researcher and an author about stakeholder relationship
management, complex projects management, and effective
communication. Massimo has a wide experience in manag-
ing large and complex projects in national and international
contexts, and in managing relations with public and private
organizations, including multinational companies, small and
medium-sized enterprises, research institutes, and non-profit
organizations. He worked successfully in several sectors,
including defense, security, health, education, cultural heritage,
transport, gaming, and services to citizens. He was also, for
xvii
xviii ◾ About the Author
many years, a top manager in ICT industry, and an adjunct

professor in organizational psychology. He is registered as an
expert of the European Commission, and as an expert of the
Italian Public Administrations. Massimo is the international
correspondent for the PM World Journal and the PM World
Library in Italy.
THE I
STAKEHOLDER
PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 1
Stakeholders,
Who Are They?
Stakeholders are persons, without a doubt: but why do we use

a word that specific, which incorporates so many concepts
that some hundreds of its different definitions exist in the
literature, and direct translation of which in other languages is
nearly impossible? In fact, some history, and a little in-depth
analysis, of the meanings of this word can help us to reveal a
significant part of the mystery.
The word stakeholder dates back to the beginning of the
eighteenth century, in England, and it meant the person who
was entrusted with the stakes of bettors: he was the holder of
all the bets placed on a game or a race, and he was the one
who was paying the money to the winners. Therefore, the first
stakeholder was a holder of interests, and this is, even today, one
of the most common meanings, if we consider, in addition, that
“having a stake” is a synonym of “having an interest”, and that
stakes (meaning “strong sticks”) can be pushed in the ground
either to mark a property, or to be part of a fence that settles the
boundaries of an estate, so defining the perimeter of an interest.
But stakes (still meaning “strong sticks”) can be hammered
in the ground also for supporting plants: in fact, it is believed
3
4 ◾ The Stakeholder Perspective
that the first modern meaning of stakeholders, which has

been attributed (Freeman, 1984) to an internal memorandum
of Stanford University Research Center dated 1963, was “those
groups without whose support the organization would cease to
exist”. Therefore, stakeholders are the strongest supporters of
an organization (we could also say that they may be ready to
“go to the stake” for it!), and their contribution is foundational
to the existence of the organization itself: main emphasis is,
in this definition, on internal stakeholders, who are the doers
of organization’s performances, and who need to be properly
engaged to give an effective contribution. Meanwhile, in the
above-mentioned perspective, stakeholders do not act anymore
as individuals only, but they are considered as part of groups,
too: stakeholders interface each other through processes, start
to act collectively, by sharing their resources and by integrat-
ing their efforts, and they do it through relations, so that their
behavior becomes organizational, and not only personal.
Furthermore, in the first text on the theory of stakeholders
(Freeman, 1984), the definition of stakeholder was “a stake-
holder in an organization is any group or individual who can
affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s
objectives”. Since “to affect” is a synonym of “to influence”,
it was here that one other of the most common concepts in
stakeholder definitions came in: stakeholders influence the
organization’s objectives, and are influenced by them, and
this is the first time that the nature of stakeholders’ centrality
in the organizations became evident, since stakeholders were
defined as both the actors and the recipients of the organiza-
tion’s results.
In the original PMBOK (Project Management Institute,
1987), the stakeholders were considered as the participants
to the project. In addition, some years later (Freeman, 1994),
the foundational concepts of participation and of created
value were enhanced too, and stakeholders were defined as
“participants in the human process of joint value creation”.
At first, in fact, stakeholders participate in the organizations,
Stakeholders, Who Are They? ◾ 5
as far as other stakeholders would like to participate in the

same organizations, and, in both cases, they want to do so
jointly, e.g., by becoming, and then being part of a specific
community, which is deeply characterized by common goals,
behavioral rules, specific languages, and so on. Thus, regard-
ing the created value, the extraordinary importance of this
concept, on the one hand, is due to the enhancement of the
stakeholders’ role on the joint creation of the business and/
or social value, while, on the other hand, is because it intro-
duces the issue that actual value which is added by stake-
holders must be considered arithmetically: in fact, it can be
positive, but also null or negative. Indeed, in, and outside
of, all the organizations, there are positive stakeholders, who
have to be engaged, and whose needs have to be satisfied,
but there are generally also neutral/reluctant stakeholders,
who require special additional efforts for their engagement,
and negative/hostile stakeholders too, who have to be disen-
gaged, if possible, but, in any case, must be dissatisfied, in
order to achieve organization’s goals.
Moreover, starting from the second half of the 1980s, a
vision of the enterprise as a complex system inserted in the
society was born, and a new “stakeholder theory” started to be
developed. In this vision, the basic idea is to extend the ben-
efits that are created by the enterprise from its shareholders to
its participants to various titles, and to affirm the conviction
that this same idea must be translated in ethical principles
of managerial behavior. Without entering into the dispute
between stakeholder view and shareholder view (also because
shareholders are stakeholders, too), it is important to notice
that above focus on corporate social responsibility started to
incorporate an important ethical component into the con-
cept of stakeholder. In fact, it is confirmed that a strong ethi-
cal concept is still valid today, since, for instance, Cambridge
Dictionary defines stakeholder as “a person such as an
employee, customer, or citizen who is involved with an orga-
nization, society, etc., and therefore has responsibilities toward
it and an interest in its success”: conveniently, responsibility is

considered by the community of project managers as one of
the top ethical issues (Project Management Institute, 2006).
Finally, if we go back to the word stake, it could be inter-
esting to notice that one of its main meaning is risk, and that
“at stake” is a synonym of “at risk”: in other words, stake-
holders do risk in order to achieve their goals, and risk-based
thinking is part of their life, exactly as it is part of several
disciplines, from project management, since its early begin-
ning, to quality management, more recently, and so on. On
the other side, stakeholders are the ones who introduce risk in
all the domains.
Are all the above considerations applicable to project stake-
holders? Of course they are, with a specific focus on unicity,
and a necessary emphasis on the relation between stakeholder
expectations and project goals, which confirms the stakeholder
centrality in all projects. Every project is, actually, unique, and
its unicity is reflected not only in its scope, goals, objectives,
deliverables, time, cost, resources, and so on, but also in its
own set of stakeholders, which, then, characterizes specifically
each project both with respect to others—also if they may be
related in the same program, and in terms of its inherent com-
plexity. Furthermore, a foundational issue is that stakeholders
are central in all the projects. In fact, organizations define strat-
egies, which are based on their own mission and vision, and
projects are means to accomplish strategic goals, then achiev-
ing, through their results, the expected benefits: the overall
value that is generated by each project determines the stake-
holder satisfaction, and the relevant project success rate, within
the whole investment life cycle (see Figure 1.1). It is, indeed,
a fact, that each project exists to implement an investment,
which, in turn, has been mutually agreed to harmonize differ-
ent stakeholder expectations: organizations define strategies,
which are based on their own mission and vision, then select
pursuable opportunities in accordance with their defined strat-
egy, then set business cases up, and, finally, start projects up.
Figure 1.1 The project investment value chain.
The inputs of a project generally include, then, business case,

contract, and Statement of Work, or things like that: of course,
there are different business cases or similar for different stake-
holders, as, for instance, providers, investors, and customers
are, and this leads to the existence of different perspectives,
in terms of results to be achieved, that will accompany the
project in all its life cycle, and also afterwards, i.e., in released
product/infrastructure/service life cycle.
In fact, while, on the one side, business cases, which are the
causes of project start-up, are based on stakeholder business
expectations, which, in turn, correspond to project goals to be
achieved, on the other side, contract and SOW (Statement Of
Work), which are the references for project development and
delivery, are based on stakeholder requirements, which are, in
turn, the conversion of different stakeholder expectations in a
commonly agreed (at least initially) project scope, and which
correspond to project objectives to be delivered. Project manager,
project team, and other stakeholders implement the project
in accordance with the requirements, and, then, deliver it to
other stakeholders: project can be considered really successful
when its goals are realized, then achieving those results that
correspond to the stakeholder expectations in terms of created

business value and relevant achieved benefits.
This double role of stakeholders is the pillar of all projects,
and confirms the stakeholder centrality: stakeholders are both
the doers and the beneficiaries of the project, and while, on
the one side, the stakeholder work is basic for project imple-
mentation, on the other side, the stakeholder satisfaction is the
main project success factor.
Definitively, a project stakeholder is a person, or a group of
persons, or an organization, who
◾◾ participates, or would like to participate, in the project;

◾◾ has some kind of interest in the project;
◾◾ can be (if properly engaged) a foundational supporter of
the project;
◾◾ may affect/influence the project, or may be affected/
influenced by the project itself;
◾◾ can bring a value, which could be either positive or nega-
tive, to the project;
◾◾ may have responsibilities toward the project, which,
in turn, is supposed to satisfy his requirements and
expectations;
◾◾ is characterized by a risk-based thinking approach;
◾◾ is part of a set that characterizes uniquely each project;
and
◾◾ has a central role in all projects: stakeholders, indeed, both
implement the project and determine its success via their
satisfaction, and, then, are the actual key for project success.
It is, then, a fact, on the one hand, that each project includes a
large variety of stakeholders, having different interests, expec-
tations, level of influence, responsibilities, etc., and, on the
other hand, that, due to the key centrality of their role, all
stakeholders are important.
In project management literature, the definitions of project
stakeholders are quite essential: while in first PMBOK (Project
Management Institute, 1987), stakeholders were considered

as just the synonym of “participants”, maybe the first real
definition of project stakeholders, with an evident emphasis
on active involvement and interest aspects, was “individuals
and organizations who are actively involved in the project, or
whose interests may be positively or negatively affected as a
result of project execution or successful project completion”
(Project Management Institute, 1996). However, current defini-
tions leave the active involvement issue, which, on one part,
limits the stakeholder domain, while, on the other, is more an
objective to be reached via positive engagement, rather than
an assumption that is part of a definition, and, at the same
time, insist on influence aspects as the core ones. Moreover,
some perspectives add the essential human factor of percep-
tion “stakeholder is a person, group or organization that has
interests in, or can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself
to be affected by, any aspect of the project” (International
Organization for Standardization, 2012), some other insist on
the first concept of participation “all individuals, groups or
organisations participating in, affecting, being affected by, or
interested in the execution or the result of the project can be
seen as stakeholders” or, very similarly, relaxing the interest
issue but with a further extension to programs and portfolios
concepts, “stakeholder is an individual, group or organization
that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected
by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project, program, or
portfolio” (Project Management Institute, 2017).
In general, typical project stakeholders include two groups
that are both temporary and specific structures of the project
domain, i.e., the project organization and the project gover-
nance stakeholders, and other groups, as investors, custom-
ers, and special interests groups, that we can find also in
more stable structures, as organizations generally are. The
project organization is the temporary structure that includes
(International Organization for Standardization, 2012) the
project manager and the project team, and that may include a
Figure 1.2 The Project Stakeholder Rose.
project management team and a Project Management Office,

too, while project governance may involve the project sponsor,
a project steering committee or board, and other top manage-
ment executives. Definitively, since all the stakeholders are
important, it is foundational to consider them all properly.
An accurate overview about different project stakeholders
should include (see Figure 1.2):
◾◾ the project manager;

◾◾ the project team, the project management team, the proj-
ect management office;
◾◾ the sponsor, the project steering committee or board, the

top management;
◾◾ the customers, the users, the contracting officers;
◾◾ the shareholders, the investors, the funders, the partners;
◾◾ the functional and/or resource managers, the employees,
the professionals, the collaborators;
◾◾ the business partners, the network partners, the distribu-
tors, the representatives, the members of the consortium;
◾◾ the suppliers, the consultants, the service companies, the
outsourcers;
◾◾ the authorities, the central and local public administration,
the regulatory bodies;
◾◾ the potential customers and users, the participants
and the candidates to participate in the project;
◾◾ the local communities, the web communities, the associa-
tions, the trade unions, the media;
◾◾ the competitors, and the other reluctant and/or negative
and/or hostile stakeholders; and
◾◾ the personal stakeholders, including stakeholders’ families,
lovers, close friends, and generally, all the persons the
stakeholders have strong personal relations with.
Project managers, who are they? In the project management

literature, one of the first definitions of project manager was
“the individual responsible for managing the project” (Project
Management Institute, 1996), and it is interesting to notice
that, in any case, responsibility has been recognized by the
community of project managers as the most important ethical
value to be used as a primary reference (Project Management
Institute, 2006). In today’s definitions, there is a special focus
on leadership, too: in fact, project manager either “leads and
manages project activities and is accountable for project com-
pletion” (International Organization for Standardization, 2012),
or “is the person assigned by the performing organization
to lead the team that is responsible for achieving the project
objectives” (Project Management Institute, 2017). However,
Figure 1.3 The Project Stakeholder Rose with some evidenced

relations among stakeholder groups.
furthermore, in modern project management, project man-

ager’s role(s) and competences became, and are still becoming,
so important, that project manager can be considered, in his
own full right, the central stakeholder among stakeholders.
At first, in fact, project manager is the only stakeholder who
must have relations with all other project stakeholders (see
Figure 1.3), and, as we will see in following chapters, who is
responsible of monitoring relations among other stakeholders,
too. The immediate, although quite never enough emphasized,
consequences of this project manager’s role are that, on the
one hand, communication with stakeholders absorbs the largest
part of project manager’s time (literature reports percentages

that are higher than 80%, maybe about 90%, and that are still
increasing), while, on the other hand, in the major part of proj-
ect management processes, the management of relations with
stakeholders is needed, as we will demonstrate in the next
chapter.
Moreover, each modern project manager must be able to
fulfill different high-level roles, which, on the one hand, reflect
his capabilities, and, on the other hand, are representative
of the value and contributions of his profession, within his
sphere of influence; specifically, these roles include (Project
Management Institute, 2017):
◾◾ in project’s domain, the project manager has to lead

the project team to meet the project’s objectives and
stakeholders’ expectations, but also he has to work to
balance the competing constraints on the project with
the resources available, and he must perform a crucial
communication role between the project sponsor, team
members, and other stakeholders, too;
◾◾ in the organization’s domain, the project manager
proactively interacts with other project managers,
and maintains a strong advocacy role within the
organization;
◾◾ in the industry’s domain, the project manager stays
informed about current industry trends, takes this infor-
mation, and sees how it may impact or apply to the
current projects;
◾◾ in the professional discipline’s domain, the project man-
ager has to take care of continuous knowledge transfer
and integration; and
◾◾ in domains across disciplines, the project manager can
have a basic role of educator, and a professional project
manager may choose to orient and educate other pro-
fessionals regarding the value of a project management
approach to the organization.
Definitely, project manager is the unique stakeholder who

spends almost 90% of his time by acting as a front office
versus the other stakeholders (while only about 10% or less of
his time is absorbed by back office activities, mainly in plan-
ning and controlling processes), and, then, he actually can be
considered as the stakeholder who is central with respect to
all other stakeholders.
It can be interesting to notice that above time percentages,
which are valid for project managers, are almost inverted in
the case of project team members, who, on the contrary, dedi-
cate the major part of their time to perform “technical” project
activities, and, then, have relatively little time to dedicate to
relations with other stakeholders: although this time is almost
spent internally, i.e., with the project manager and with other
team members, it is foundational externally too, in order both
to check the validity of the requirements with customers and/
or users, and to valorize the perceived quality.
Finally, while existing literature substantially agrees on the
belonging to the project stakeholders’ domain of almost all
individuals and groups that have been identified as those that
are relevant for the project, including project manager, the
project team, the project management team, the project man-
agement office, the sponsor, the project steering committee or
board, the top management, the customers, the users, the con-
tracting officers, the shareholders, the investors, the funders,
the partners, the functional and/or resource managers, the
employees, the professionals, the collaborators, the business
partners, the network partners, the distributors, the representa-
tives, the members of the consortia, the suppliers, the consul-
tants, the service companies, the outsourcers, the authorities,
the central and local public administration, the regulatory bod-
ies, the potential customers and users, the participants and the
candidates to participate in the project, the local communities,
the web communities, the associations, the trade unions, the
media, the web, there are two groups of foundational impor-
tance that have been, quite incomprehensibly, substantially
forgotten and/or neglected by project management literature:

the reluctant/negative/hostile stakeholders, and the personal
stakeholders, i.e., the people with whom project stakeholders
have strong personal relations, including families, lovers, close
friends and relatives, and so on.
Reluctant stakeholders are not necessarily hostile, but, since
they tend not to give their expected support, they do not guar-
antee their contribution in terms of positive value to the proj-
ect: special additional efforts are then continuously needed to
engage them, in order to avoid possible, and frequent, nega-
tive impacts on the project itself. On the other hand, nega-
tive and hostile stakeholders aim at bringing an increasing
negative value, and, if they are not combated properly, they
can become a critical issue for the project. Both hostile and
negative stakeholders have interests that are contrary to the
project, and, then, hope project’s failure, but, generally, while
the hostile stakeholders, as the competitors and other com-
munities that do not want the project to be realized (e.g., the
NIMBY “Not In My Back Yard” associations), are evident, the
negative stakeholders, who are commonly present in the same
organizations that are entitled to implement the project, and
who oppose the project for reasons of internal competition/
envy and/or disagreement on priorities/budgets, are gener-
ally hidden, and their identification is often quite difficult.
Furthermore, especially in Information Security domain,
there are two additional categories of hidden stakeholders
that are of extraordinary importance, which are the unre-
vealed stakeholders and the two-timing stakeholders: both act
as normal stakeholders until such time as they can, suddenly
and/or unexpectedly, turn out to be hostile, and then create
great damages to the project through hacking, cracking, DoS
(denial-of-service) attacks, social engineering, etc. Ultimately,
both hostile and negative stakeholders mainly combat the proj-
ect by trying to discredit it, often by using the power of ampli-
fication that is a characteristic of internet and/or social media,
and, if project reputation is not properly defended, they can
succeed to be disruptive for the project, as we will see in

following paragraphs.
Finally, the personal stakeholders, who are the people with
whom project stakeholders have strong personal relations,
including families, lovers, close friends, and (although not
always!) parents and relatives, although they are not directly
involved in the project, have an extraordinary importance in
order to achieve project success. In fact, personal stakeholders
do not only wish and/or want to participate to the project, but
they can be also considered as engaged full time, and they can
influence very significantly the motivation of key stakeholders,
including the project manager, the project team, the spon-
sor, the top management, the board, and the customers too.
Personal stakeholders may turn out to be either part of the best
supporters of the project, e.g., in case they believe the project
is an opportunity for the key stakeholder they have a close
relation with, or part of the worst hostile/negative of the project
itself, e.g., in case they become haters of the project because
they believe that it takes up too much time to their relation-
ship, and, furthermore and unfortunately, quite often, on an
event-based logic, they can change rapidly, and several times,
from one behavior to the other. In project management litera-
ture, just team members’ families, among all possible personal
stakeholders, were mentioned as project stakeholders, but this
happened only in the early beginning (Project Management
Institute, 1996), while, after that, they disappeared.
Definitively, stakeholders, i.e., people, are central with
respect to all projects. Indeed, stakeholders, including the
project manager and the project team, are the doers of the
project, as well as other stakeholders, including customers/
users, and shareholders/funders, are the target groups of the
project itself: business is the domain in which various stake-
holders interact, through both project and project management
processes, to create and to exchange value. The relationships
among the project stakeholders are, then, real and proper busi-
ness and social relationships, which are associated with the
generation, and the exchange, of business and/or social value:

in general, this flow of value, among the stakeholders, courses
through the project with a continuous exchange of resources
and results (Pirozzi, 2017). Managing contents and relations
of, and among, project stakeholders is the extended meaning
of what we call stakeholder management: ultimately, although
only quite recently, project management community started to
recognize the primary importance of both stakeholders and
stakeholder management.
Chapter 2
The Recent Central

Role of Stakeholders
in Project Management
It is, then, a fact, that stakeholders are central with respect to

all projects; however, have they been, and are they, considered
central by project management discipline, too? A synthetic
multiple answer could be the following:
◾◾ stakeholders were present in project management litera-

ture from the early beginning, but they have not been
considered central at all for almost 25 years.
◾◾ ultimately, because for very few years only, stakeholders
and stakeholder management have started to be consid-
ered central.
◾◾ it seems that there is still a long way to pay the necessary
attention to their needs and expectations, in order to
satisfy them both.
In order to explain the above multiple answers properly,

some detailed analysis of main reference texts for proj-
ect management, different releases of which may represent
19
actual milestones of the stakeholder role that was, and is,

perceived by Project Management Community, is needed and
appropriate.
Just to start, it is interesting to notice that, while in the
original PMBOK (Project Management Institute, 1987) the
stakeholders were considered only as the participants to the
project, may be the first “official” main definition of Project
Management, which was contained in first edition of PMBOK
Guide (Project Management Institute, 1996), was absolutely
stakeholder-centered, and, at the same time, incredibly mod-
ern, since it mentioned stakeholder expectations too: “Project
management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and
techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stake-
holder needs and expectations from a project”. Immediately
afterwards, needs were defined as identified requirements,
while expectations were defined as unidentified require-
ments; of course, today, since there is still a trend of about
the 50% of scope creeps in the projects (Project Management
Institute, 2018), the purpose of “exceeding stakeholder needs”
seems to us to be a bit anachronistic. Nevertheless, on the
other side, in the same first Guide, not only stakeholder was
not included in the knowledge areas, but, moreover, stakehold-
ers were mentioned just in two communication (or informa-
tion?) processes; in fact, although they were considered as a
basic part of the project context, as it is today, in the whole
set of processes they were mentioned only in the plan-
ning process “communication planning”, and in the execu-
tion process “information distribution”. In practice, among
all project management processes, stakeholders started to be
considered, but just as passive subjects, i.e., as receivers of
a unilateral information distribution only; in addition, stake-
holder identification was not considered as a basic process in
the Initiating process group, but only as a difficult activity, and
the expression “stakeholder management” was missing at all
in the Guide. Definitively, in this first Guide, although stake-
holders apparently were essential, there were no indications
Recent Central Role of Stakeholders in Project Management ◾ 21
about managing the relations with them, except two processes

of “communication (but meaning information) management”;
in fact, the matter that was considered, was not managing a
complex interpersonal “communication” among stakeholders,
but just a unidirectional stream of project information.
Furthermore, four years later, in the second edition of
PMBOK Guide (Project Management Institute, 2000), stake-
holder role reached another low point, since stakeholders
disappeared from the project management main defini-
tion: “Project management is the application of knowledge,
skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project
requirements”. Above definition, which survived still valid
and unmodified until today, i.e., almost 20 years later (Project
Management Institute, 2017), focused on requirements only,
and that enshrined the gap between satisfying stakeholder
requirements and expectations. Second, “project requirements”,
replaced “stakeholder requirements”; although the difference
at first glance seems minimal, it is not at all, because while
project requirements are evidently supposed to be objective and
neutral, stakeholder requirements are intrinsically subjective
and biased. Focusing on the objectivity of project require-
ments, then, resolved in an indirect suggestion both of not
taking into account properly the importance of stakeholder
relations in realizing deliverables, and of achieving stakeholder
satisfaction in order to make the project successful; moreover,
in some way, it incorporated also the false myth that projects
have a linear behavior, i.e., that projects, and specifically
complex projects, can be managed purely objectively, with-
out taking properly into account the influence of stakeholder
(people) subjectivity. Of course, project managers know that
real world is different; quite often, and especially in all com-
plex projects, stakeholder expectations, with their subjectivity,
correct the linearity of objective project requirements, which,
for their part, are the result of an as well as possible media-
tion among different stakeholder expectations … but we will
look in depth into these issues in the following chapters.
For the rest, in this edition of the PMBOK Guide, in terms of

processes, stakeholder identification is mentioned, just once, as
a difficult activity, and not as a process (initiation process was
considered, at that time, a formal authorization only); more-
over, stakeholder role continues to be confined to the commu-
nication management processes, i.e., specifically, as it was in
previous Guide, to Communication Planning process, which
in any case was considered as a not-core facilitating planning
process, and in Information Distribution process.
The third edition of PMBOK Guide (Project Management
Institute, 2004) introduced a step forward in terms of pro-
cesses, since, for the first time, there was a process that incor-
porated the word “stakeholder”; in fact, “Manage Stakeholders”
process, which was supposed to “manage communications
to satisfy the needs of, and resolve issues with, project stake-
holders”, was included in the communication processes, and
it replaced previous “Administrative Closure”, that was the
process for “generating, gathering, and disseminating infor-
mation to formalize phase or project completion”, and which
migrated, including some proper fortification, in its natural
location of project closing processes. At long last stakeholders
entered directly in project management processes, although
focus continued to be limited to communications manage-
ment processes, which, may be with a certain overvaluation,
had also the not obvious (at all) task of satisfying the needs
of, and resolving issue with, project stakeholders (what about
managing deliverables? and changes?). In any case, stakeholder
did not become a knowledge area yet, and the process of
managing stakeholders was still considered as a process of
communication management, as well as there were no news
at all in terms of stakeholder identification, although, on the
one hand, basic concept of project charter was added, and, on
the other hand, interesting outputs of Managing Stakeholders,
as Resolved Issues, Approved Change Requests, Approved
Corrective Actions, Organizational Process Assets Updates, and
Project Management Plan Updates, were included.
The following PMBOK Guide, the fourth edition (Project

Management Institute, 2008), was of basic importance for
stakeholder processes, since, although still staying in Project
Communications Management, the very important processes
“Identify Stakeholders” and “Collect Requirements” were added,
and “Manage Stakeholder Expectations” replaced previous
“Manage Stakeholders” process; but, in any case, in terms of
stakeholder role, as we will see in the following … all that
glitters is not gold. Identify Stakeholders was defined as “the
process of identifying all people or organizations impacted
by the project, and documenting relevant information regard-
ing their interests, involvement, and impact on project suc-
cess”, it was properly allocated in the Initiating process group,
and it had as outputs both the Stakeholder Register and the
Stakeholder Management Strategy. Collect Requirements
was defined as “the process of defining and documenting
stakeholders’ needs to meet the project objectives”, and the
decision was to allocate this process in the Planning process
group (of course in the scope, and not in the communica-
tions, knowledge area); although above definition of the
process seems not to be completely clear, it seems to reflect,
in this case too, the perspective of requirement objectivity,
and a first key question may arise; which came first, the stake-
holders’ needs or the project objectives? Manage Stakeholder
Expectations, which replaced previous Manage Stakeholders,
was defined as “the process of communicating and working
with stakeholders to meet their needs and addressing issues as
they occur”. In this definition, the word “working” seemed to
be supportive in terms of developing effective relations with
stakeholders, but, going in further details, it was specified that
“Manage Stakeholder Expectations involves communication
activities directed toward project stakeholders to influence their
expectations […], such as actively managing the expectations of
stakeholders to increase the likelihood of project acceptance by
negotiating and influencing their desires to achieve and main-
tain the project goals”. Then, while above statement is perfectly
clear if applied to generic “desires”, another key question may

arise: are we sure that it is really possible and/or convenient to
influence the stakeholder expectations, since, on one hand,
the same expectations were foundational for the existence of
the project itself, and, on the other hand, the satisfaction of the
same expectations is the basis for achieving project goals? In
any case, Managing Stakeholder Expectations process had
specific and accurate outputs, as Organizational Process Assets
Updates, Change Requests, Project Management Plan Updates,
and Project Document Updates.
Then, finally, in 2012, the turning point showed up: the
new International Standard “ISO 21500—Guidance on
project management/Lignes directrices sur le management
de projet” (International Organization for Standardization,
2012)—enshrined stakeholders’ primary role. ISO 21500,
which was published after about a 5-year work of ISO Project
Committee 36 (that included experts from almost 40 participat-
ing countries), had, and has (since it is presently still valid as
international standard in project management), the purpose of
providing high-level description (the document altogether con-
sists of 36 pages only!) of concepts and processes that were
considered to form good practices in project management.
Indeed, “Stakeholder” was defined as a “Subject Group”, and
other subject groups included Integration, Scope, Resource,
Time, Cost, Risk, Quality, Procurement, and Communication
(“subject groups” in ISO 21500 correspond, in through and
through, to “knowledge areas” of PMBOK guides): the defi-
nition of the Stakeholder Subject Group is “the stakeholder
subject group includes the processes required to identify and
manage the project sponsor, customers, and other stakeholders”.
Moreover, in ISO 21500, there are 2 of the 39 main pro-
cesses (see Figure 2.1) that are directly related to stakeholder,
and both of them are of course included in Stakeholder sub-
ject group; Identify Stakeholders, which is part of Initiating
process group, and Manage Stakeholders, which is part of
Execution process group.
Figure 2.1 Mind map of ISO 21500 project management processes.
The purpose of Identify Stakeholders process is “to deter-

mine the individuals, groups or organizations affected by, or
affecting, the project and to document relevant information
regarding their interest and involvement”, and its primary
output is, then, the Stakeholder Register. As far as Manage
Stakeholders process is concerned, its purpose is “to give
appropriate understanding and attention to stakeholders’
needs and expectations”, while main output of this process is
the unsolved issues, which originate Change Requests; then,
from now on, the stakeholder relations become central in proj-
ect management. Moreover, the utility of soft skills, which in
the previous literature was considered limited to team devel-
opment issues, spreads to all the domain of stakeholder rela-
tions; for instance, this is the first time that “new” concepts,
as diplomacy and tact, are defined “essential when negotiating
with stakeholders”. Furthermore, we should notice the impor-
tance of the fact that, in any perspective, the majority, or even
all, of Project Management processes are, either directly or
indirectly, related to stakeholder relations, too (see Figure 2.1).
In fact, besides the importance of the two main processes that
are directly related to stakeholders, stakeholder relations influ-
ence deeply all initiating, implementing, and closing processes,
but also a major part of planning and control processes; the
remaining part of planning and control processes, which is
mainly relevant to time and cost subject groups, could have,
in theory, the project manager as its single actor, but, in the
practice of today’s world, it may be absolutely appropriate to
engage the project team, too.
While PMBOK Guide, fourth edition (Project Management
Institute, 2008), was basic for ISO 21500 realization, PMBOK
Guide, fifth edition (Project Management Institute, 2013),
which was intentionally released about one year later,
ensured alignment and harmonization with ISO 21500 itself.
Moreover, the point that this last Guide “aligns better with
the focus on stakeholder management being put forward with
the new ISO 21500 standard” was considered as a strength;
after almost twenty years, stakeholder becomes a brand new

knowledge area, and this confirms the acknowledgement of
centrality, in Project Management discipline, of both stake-
holders and stakeholder management. Project Stakeholder
Management processes include both the “renewed” processes
Identify Stakeholders and Manage Stakeholder Engagement,
which were somehow present in the Project Communications
Management Knowledge Area of previous fourth release, and
the “brand-new“ processes Plan Stakeholder Management
and Control Stakeholder Management; from now on, the
processes that are directly related to stakeholders are present
in the Initiating, Planning (new), Executing, and Monitoring/
Controlling (new) process groups. Identify Stakeholders
belongs to the Initiating process group, and it is defined as
“the process of identifying the people, groups, or organiza-
tions that could impact or be impacted by a decision, activity,
or outcome of the project; and analyzing and documenting
relevant information regarding their interests, involvement,
interdependencies, influence, and potential impact on project
success”. This definition enriches and strengthens previous
one, and introduces a basic issue, i.e., the stakeholder analysis;
the output of this process is still, of course, the Stakeholder
Register. Plan Stakeholder Management is a new process,
which is included in the Planning process group, and it is “the
process of developing appropriate management strategies to
effectively engage stakeholders throughout the project life cycle,
based on the analysis of their needs, interests, and potential
impact on project success”. This process is of basic importance,
not only because it is the first time that a stakeholder-oriented
process becomes part of planning, but also because, together
with the other two following processes, stakeholder manage-
ment comes out of communication management domain, and
enters, by targeting the importance of effective engagement,
in the domain of all-round relationship management. Main
output of this process is the Stakeholder Management Plan,
which now is in addition to the Communications Management
Plan. The process Manage Stakeholder Engagement, which is

included in the Executing process group, integrates previous
Manage Stakeholders Expectation by focusing on Stakeholders
Engagement, and is defined as “the process of communicat-
ing and working with stakeholders to meet their needs/expec-
tations, address issues as they occur, and foster appropriate
stakeholder engagement in project activities throughout the
project life cycle”. From now on, in PMBOK Guide, Stakeholder
Management integrates Communications Management, and
this is furthermore evident from the fact that basic inputs
to this process are both Stakeholder Management Plan and
Communications Management Plan; a major output con-
tinues to be The Change Requests. The Control Stakeholder
Engagement process is the first stakeholder-related process that
has been included in the Monitoring and Controlling process
group, and it is defined as “the process of monitoring overall
project stakeholder relationships and adjusting strategies and
plans for engaging stakeholders”; as per other processes which
are part of the Monitoring and Controlling process group,
main outputs include Work Performance Information and,
again, Change Requests.
After a while, also the other major International Association
IPMA, enshrined, coherently to ISO 21500, stakeholder
role (International Project Management Association, 2015).
Stakeholders, in fact, are a Practice Competence Element,
which “includes identifying, analyzing, engaging and manag-
ing the attitudes and expectations of all relevant stakeholders”;
the Competence Area Practice deals with core project compe-
tences, which include Project design, Requirements and objec-
tives, Scope, Time, Organisation and information, Quality,
Finance, Resources, Procurement, Plan and control, Risk and
opportunities, and, precisely, Stakeholder. Moreover, the pur-
pose of the Competence Element Stakeholder “is to enable
the individual to manage stakeholder interests, influence and
expectations, to engage stakeholders and effectively man-
age their expectations”; then, in ICB (Individual Competence
Baseline) 4.0, there is a quite modern focus on stakeholder

expectations, too. Furthermore, stakeholders are obviously the
core of the other Competence Area People, which deals with
the personal and social competences of the individual, includ-
ing self-reflection and self-management, personal integrity and
reliability, personal communication, relationships and engage-
ment, leadership, teamwork, conflict and crisis, resourceful-
ness, negotiation, and results orientation, and also of other
Competence Area Perspective, which deals with the context of
a project, including strategy, governance, structure and pro-
cesses, compliance, standards and regulations, power and
interests, and culture and values.
Lastly, in PMBOK Guide, sixth edition (Project Management
Institute, 2017), the importance of stakeholders’ role has been
confirmed and enhanced: “Project Stakeholder Management
includes the processes required to identify the people, groups, or
organizations that could impact or be impacted by the proj-
ect, to analyze stakeholder expectations and their impact on
the project, and to develop appropriate management strategies
for effectively engaging stakeholders in project decisions and
execution”. The processes that relate to stakeholder manage-
ment include
◾◾ Identify Stakeholders, almost identical to the correspon-

dent one in previous guide, defined as “the process of
identifying project stakeholders regularly and analyzing
and documenting relevant information regarding their
interests, involvement, interdependencies, influence, and
potential impact on project success”;
◾◾ the revised Plan Stakeholder Engagement, defined as “the
process of developing approaches to involve project stake-
holders based on their needs, expectation, interests, and
potential impact on the project”;
◾◾ the revised Manage Stakeholder Engagement, defined as
“the process of communicating and working with stake-
holders to meet their needs and expectations, address
issues, and foster appropriate stakeholder engagement

involvement”; and
◾◾ Monitor Stakeholder Engagement, which replaced previ-
ous Control Stakeholder Engagement, defined as “the
process of monitoring project stakeholder relationships and
tailoring strategies for engaging stakeholders through the
modification of engagement strategies and plans”.
Definitively, today, standards recognize fully the centrality

of stakeholders, but it seems that there is still a long way to
pay the necessary attention to their needs and expectations,
in order to satisfy them both. In fact, on the one hand, since
maybe almost 90% of professionals have been certified in
a context ante-PMBOK Guide, fifth edition, in which it was
considered normal (and sufficient!) to give priority to hard
skills to target project success, current phenomenon is still
that the large majority of project managers, although it seems
that they spend almost 90% of their time communicating with
stakeholders, find it hard to recognize both stakeholder cen-
tral role and the basic importance of soft skills. On the other
hand, since the acknowledgment of stakeholder centrality is so
recent, few stakeholder-dedicated literature and good practices
exist, and this makes it difficult to implement adequately the
stakeholder-relevant processes. In any case, further steps in
the direction of effectiveness with respect to both stakeholder
identification and management seem necessary to increase the
project success rate, especially in cases of large and/or complex
projects, and, therefore, some of these steps will be proposed
in following chapters.
Chapter 3
Stakeholder
Identification:
Integrating Multiple
Classification and
Behavioral Models
The first process that is needed in order to develop an

effective management of stakeholder relations is Identify
Stakeholders, which is included in the Initiating Process
Group, and, then, is preliminary to planning processes in all
projects and in all of their eventual phases. The purpose of
this process is to determine the individuals, groups, or orga-
nizations relevant to the project, i.e., affected by, or affecting,
the project itself, to collect information regarding their inter-
ests, their needs and expectations, their influence, their
involvement, their potential, their interdependencies, their
impact on project success, and to document everything prop-
erly, e.g., in a stakeholder register. It should be noted that it
is extremely appropriate to repeat this process of stakeholder
identification periodically, since, in each project life cycle,
31
stakeholders can quite often get in and out of the project

domain, just as much as both their attributes and their rela-
tions can change.
Since stakeholders are numerous, are diverse, and have dif-
ferent needs and expectations, their identification has neces-
sarily to be analytical. In fact, on the one hand, their centrality
requires a deep attention, and on the other hand, all stakehold-
ers are important for targeting project success, while, in any
case, forgetting a stakeholder who could be, or become, key
would be an unacceptable risk.
On the other side, project stakeholder domain is character-
ized by a multilevel complexity:
◾◾ Stakeholders are persons, or groups of persons, and we

can assume that persons are the most complex systems that
exist in the world.
◾◾ Stakeholders are diverse, and they are diverse from dif-
ferent perspectives. Project stakeholders, in fact, may
have diverse interests and/or influence, may participate
to and/or support diversely the project, they may add
diverse value (either positive, or null, or negative), they
may belong to diverse organizations and/or communities,
and, since each organization is generally characterized
also by a common business and/or social language, they
may even speak or understand diverse organizational
languages.
◾◾ Stakeholders are numerous, and stakeholder relations are
even more numerous. If we consider stakeholders individ-
ually, in each project it could be very easy to distinguish
hundreds of relations or thousands if we include the
people from the web.
◾◾ Stakeholder relations are context sensitive. Indeed, both
internal and external environments, just like business,
social, or technological strategies, as well as economic,
time, regulatory, legal, or social requirements and/or con-
straints, impact continuously on stakeholder relations.
Stakeholder Identification ◾ 33
◾◾ Stakeholder relations may influence each other, and this

can happen continuously. Then, taking care of both the
relation with stakeholders and the relations among stake-
holders becomes essential.
◾◾ All stakeholder relations, due to their centrality, are impor-
tant, and, at least, they have to be monitored.
◾◾ Stakeholder relations may be evolutive in the life cycle
of the project. New stakeholders may come in, existing
stakeholders may come out, each stakeholder may change
level of importance and/or behavior, and this may happen
several times.
Therefore, relations with, and among, stakeholders, introduce

multilevel complexity in all projects: classification models of
stakeholders are mandatory to reduce that huge complexity,
and, then, to make stakeholder relations issues addressable
and manageable. We can consider two main types of clas-
sification models for stakeholders, which are based on two
diverse perspectives: multiple classification models, which
consider the belonging of stakeholders to different subjective
categories, and the classification of stakeholders in communi-
ties, which reflects the stakeholder objective behavior. Most
commonly used multiple classification models are the grids,
and especially the power/influence grid, the stakeholder cube,
and the salience model.
The basic concept of the grids is categorizing stakeholders
based on two of their main attributes, and then representing
the results on a two-dimensional matrix. The most common
grid is the power/interest grid (Mendelow, 1991), which catego-
rizes stakeholders according to their level of authority in the
project and their level of interest toward the project results, but
also the power/influence grid and the influence/impact grid
are present in the literature. Although power/influence grid
has been developed almost 30 years ago, and it was created
to be applied generically to organizations, rather than specifi-
cally to projects, it still has all its validity; in fact, with some
Figure 3.1 Power/interest grid.
customization, it is a tool quite simple to use, but immediately

shareable, and enough powerful to support stakeholder identi-
fication, especially by categorizing them based on their impor-
tance for, and in, the project (see Figure 3.1, Power/interest
Grid). In addition, complexity of actions to be taken may be
drastically reduced by grouping the management of relations
in four typologies: monitor, keep informed, keep satisfied, and
manage closely.
Players include key stakeholders, as project team, project
sponsor, top management, customers, users, and investors.
Evidently, the relations with them must be managed closely
and generally, require direct, interpersonal communications.
Context setters generally include government, central and local
public administrations, but may also include associations, trade
unions, and, generally, all the organizations which establish
constraints to the project in the form of laws, regulations,
norms, standards, etc. Relations with context setter stakehold-
ers shall keep them satisfied, and require compliance with the
rules. Subjects may include interest groups, but also internal
stakeholders, as functional managers and employees, who

could support the project, so it can be also useful and conve-
nient to keep them informed. Finally, monitoring the relations
with/among other people and/or organizations involved, or
that would like to be involved, generally requires the mini-
mum level of effort, but it is even necessary, not only because
all the stakeholders are important, but also because, in gen-
eral, stakeholders who are characterized by a certain level
of power and/or influence could migrate, during project life
cycle, to higher levels.
Stakeholder cube is a three-dimensional grid that maps
stakeholders by introducing the third dimension of Attitude,
in addition to the previous ones Power and Interest (Murray-
Webster and Simon, 2006); while power is considered as
the ability to influence the project, the level of interest states
whether stakeholders will be active or passive, and attitude
to the project indicates if stakeholders will either support the
project or resist to it. Above three dimensions interact in eight
different ways (see Figure 3.2):
◾◾ Saviours are powerful, active, have high interest, positive

attitude, and managing closely the relations with them is
necessary.
◾◾ Friends are low power, have high interest, and positive
attitude, and they should be engaged as supporters.
◾◾ Saboteurs are powerful, have high interest, and nega-
tive attitude, and they need to be engaged in order to
disengage.
◾◾ Irritants are low power, have high interest, and negative
attitude, and they need to be engaged so that they stop
“eating away”.
◾◾ Sleeping giants are powerful, have low interest, and posi-
tive attitude, and they need to be engaged in order to
awaken them.
◾◾ Acquaintances are low power, have low interest, but posi-
tive attitude, and they need to be kept informed.
Figure 3.2 The stakeholder cube.
◾◾ Time bombs are powerful, have low interest, and nega-

tive attitude, and they have to be managed to avoid that
“bomb detonates”.
◾◾ Trip wires are low power, have low interest, and they
need to be understood “watch the step”.
Another multiple classification that is present in the litera-

ture is Salience Model (Mitchell, Agle and Wood, 1997), in
which three main stakeholder attributes are defined, i.e.,
Power, Legitimacy, and Urgency, and then combined to iden-
tify each stakeholder group based on its “salience”. In any
case, since stakeholder attributes are variable (not steady
state), socially constructed, and subjective (not objective),
and, moreover, consciousness and willful exercise may or
may not be present, in general, stakeholders may gain or
Figure 3.3 The salience model.
lose their salience during the whole project life cycle. In

Salience Model, there are seven stakeholder typologies,
either Latent (Dormant, Discretionary, and Demanding) or
Expectant (Dominant, Dependent, Dangerous, and Definitive),
each one having either one, or two, or three attributes, plus
the Non-stakeholder typology, which, of course, has no attri-
butes at all (see Figure 3.3).
Therefore, in salience model, stakeholders are categorized
based on their power, i.e., their ability to impose their will,
their urgency, i.e., their need of immediate attention, and the
legitimacy of their involvement.
Ultimately, multiple classification models are quite effec-
tive to prioritize stakeholders in accordance with their impor-
tance, and, specifically, to identify those key stakeholders, with
whom, as we will see later on, a direct relationship is neces-
sary to be developed; all of these models are based on the
stakeholder belonging to certain categories. However, multiple
classification models still leave some open issues that it is bet-
ter to face, in order to increase both stakeholder identification
efficacy and its effective usability by other stakeholder man-

agement processes, which are as follows:
◾◾ While all the stakeholders are important, since they are

central toward the project, stakeholder characterization
in multiple classification models is a subjective pro-
cess, and the importance of some stakeholder could be
either over valuated, or, even worse, under evaluated, or
ignored at all.
◾◾ Project stakeholder characterization in multiple classi-
fication models is also, unavoidably, dynamic, because
stakeholders may change their belonging category during
all the project life cycle, and this leads to the need of a
continuous monitoring.
◾◾ While in each project, stakeholder behavior can signifi-
cantly either influence or being influenced by time, cost,
and quality, stakeholder belonging to a certain category in
multiple classification models per se does not.
◾◾ In multiple classification models, no correlations between
categories and stakeholder expectations are evident, and/
or specific, for each category.
◾◾ In multiple classification models, project stakeholders
maintain their individual behavior, even if they belong
to the same category, and/or they are at the same level of
importance, and this does not lead to a further reduction
of the complexity in following stakeholder-related pro-
cesses, where specific actions have to be addressed.
Definitively, while stakeholder belonging to a certain category

of importance is subjective, dynamic, not correlated with time,
cost, and quality, and appears quite fragmentary in stakeholder
domain, categories that are based on stakeholder common
behaviors and main interests are objective, durable, homoge-
neous, and directly related to project characteristics.
The behavioral classification of stakeholders in commu-
nities, each one sharing a common prevalent interest and a
common organizational language (Pirozzi, 2017), is indeed

a segmentation of the domain of stakeholders that helps
effectively to reduce drastically the complexity of stakeholder
management, since it categorizes the whole domain of proj-
ect stakeholders in four communities only. Moreover, since
each community targets the prevailing variable/s quality/
time/cost from the point of view of its specific interests,
there is the reliable advantage of a specific, accurate, and
direct correlation among each stakeholder community and
the three main dimensions that characterize each project.
Although this behavioral model is quite recent, there already
have been major representatives of project management
community who were so kind to support it (Archibald, 2017
and 2018; Stretton, October and December 2018) with their
positive commentaries, then encouraging the author (myself)
to proceed further.
In each project, there are, indeed, four main communi-
ties of stakeholders, which can be defined, respectively,
as the Providers, the Purchasers, the Investors, and the
Influencers. Each one of these communities shares a pre-
vailing interest in the project and a specific organizational
language, and, then, stakeholders that are part of each of
these categories have a common behavior. Since each one of
the four communities can be characterized by three main
dimensions, and it is therefore representable with a cube,
as well as the triad of variable quality/time/cost can be
represented with a cube, too, the four communities of proj-
ect stakeholders and the triad of variable quality/time/cost
can be represented with a hypercube in 4 + 1 = 5 dimen-
sions (see Figure 3.4).
The prevailing interest of the Providers is in the project as
a whole. The project manager, the project team, the project
management office, the suppliers, and/or the business part-
ners share the common interest of realizing the project, in its
optimal combination of the three main variables, i.e., time,
cost, and quality. Their specific organizational language is the
Figure 3.4 The stakeholder hypercube.
language of project management discipline, and their primary

objective is the project completion within the triple constraints.
The prevailing interest of the Purchasers is the quality of
the project. Both the customers, who contracted the proj-
ect, and the end users, who will be the beneficiaries of the
products/services that will be delivered by the project, focus
on the common interest of obtaining from the project as
much quality as possible, and this is also because they usu-
ally feel that both the costs and the time of the project are
not further negotiable, while quality is. Their specific organi-
zational language is their business language, and the project
for them is not a goal, but just a medium to achieve their
own business goals.
The prevailing interest of the Investors is the profitabil-
ity. This result can be achieved by minimizing the project
costs, by receiving the contracted income, and, possibly, by
developing additional revenues over time; and it is only in
this perspective of any business prospects that the delivered
quality of the project could interest them. In the community
of Investors, the sponsor and the project governance, the
shareholders and the top management, as well as any exter-
nal funder, are generally included. Their specific language is
the language of business economics, and the project is con-

sidered by them, in this case too, a medium to achieve their
business goals.
Finally, the prevailing interest of the Influencers is to partici-
pate in the project, even if they may not be a contracting party.
In the community of the Influencers there are the authorities,
such as the public administrations, the media, plus a large
variety of other communities, e.g., the local communities, the
lobbies, the trade unions, the associations, and so forth, as
well as the negative/hostile stakeholders, such as the competi-
tors, just like the personal stakeholders, and also that poten-
tially very important group for project, and/or program, and/or
portfolio, which is the domain of the potential customers and/
or users. Their specific language is the language of the media
and/or the natural language, but sometimes and/or occasion-
ally business language and the language of economics may
be present too (Stretton, October 2018), while the project is for
Influencers a medium that supports their goals and/or their
own mission.
Definitively, integrating a multiple classification model, as
the power/interest grid, with the behavioral model of commu-
nities, can be very simple, since it is sufficient to associate to
every stakeholder a letter that corresponds to each community
(see Figure 3.5), and it is also effective at all, both to iden-
tify those key stakeholders to develop a direct communica-
tion with and to drastically reduce complexity of stakeholder
management.
Finally, in project management, the major output of Identify
Stakeholder process is the Stakeholder Register. This document
contains information about identified stakeholders, which
includes the following (Project Management Institute, 2017):
◾◾ Identification information. Name, organizational position,

location and contact details, and role on the project;
◾◾ Assessment information. Major requirements, expecta-
tions, potential for influencing project outcomes, and the
Figure 3.5 The power/interest grid including categorization

in communities.
phase of the project life cycle where the stakeholder has

the most influence or impact; and
◾◾ Stakeholder classification. Internal/external, impact/
influence/power/interest, upward/downward/outward/
sideward, or any other classification model chosen by the
project manager (e.g., the behavioral model in stakeholder
communities).
Even if the first version of the document is an output of the

Initiating Process Group, Stakeholder Register is updated dur-
ing whole project life cycle, and, then, requires a specific, and
delicate, management.
Moreover, since Stakeholder Register is an input or an
output of about the half of all project management processes,
it is a document that is vital for the project and that must
be created carefully, and contents of which must be both
accurate and characterized by a reasonable level of detail.

While some information about stakeholders and their classi-
fication are a natural, and quite evident, result of stakeholder
identification process, other essential information, including
diverse stakeholder expectations and stakeholder real role
in the project are normally unknown and/or hidden; this is
why stakeholder analysis is fundamental for achieving proj-
ect success, too.
Chapter 4
Effective Stakeholder
Analysis: A Systemic
Approach
An effective stakeholder analysis is essential to target project

success, because:
◾◾ stakeholder expectations are different, and they have to be

harmonized and/or prioritized via a decision process;
◾◾ the adherence of project requirements and constraints to
stakeholder expectations must be verified and validated;
and
◾◾ some important stakeholder expectations, and even some
stakeholder roles in the project, may be unclear and/or
hidden, and have to emerge properly.
Stakeholder analysis is presently described, in project manage-

ment literature, either as a part of Identify Stakeholders process
“a detailed analysis should be made of stakeholders and of the
impacts they might have on the project, so that the project man-
ager can take maximum advantage of their contribution to the
project” (International Organization for Standardization, 2012) or
45
as one of the “Tools and Techniques”, which is present in each of

the Plan Risk Management, Identify Stakeholders, and Monitor
Stakeholder Engagement processes (Project Management
Institute, 2017). In this latter case, stakeholder analysis is sup-
posed to result in a list of stakeholders which include basic
information such as their expectations, their positions in the
organization, their roles on the project, their levels of support of
the project, and their “stakes”, i.e., their interests, rights, knowl-
edge, ownership, contribution. Whatever the approach is, an
effective stakeholder analysis is foundational to define properly
project scope, which is one of the basis of possible project suc-
cess, since the first question we have always to answer to in all
projects is “what do we really have to do?”.
Which is the real situation today in terms of understanding
stakeholder expectations and properly assessing project scopes?
Although it seems that our project management community
does not like to talk very much about this topic, it is evident
from valuable PMI’s surveys (Project Management Institute,
2018) that projects do not seem to be so successful investments,
since, today, more than 30% of projects do not meet their origi-
nal goals and business intent, i.e., they do not satisfy stakeholder
expectations, and almost 50% of the projects experience scope
creeps (clearly, a little lower percentages are valid also for proj-
ects that are not completed within their initial budget, and/or
within their initially scheduled times), i.e., their results do not
match anymore with initial project requirements. This situa-
tion is so common that one of the greatest authors in project
management, Harold Kerzner, states “there are three things that
most project managers know will happen with almost certainty:
death, taxes, and scope creep …. Scope creep is a natural
occurrence for project managers. We must accept the fact that
this will happen” (Kerzner, 2017). Main causes of above effects
include, besides of course project complexity, the following:
◾◾ misunderstanding, and/or lack of knowledge, of stake-

holder expectations;
Effective Stakeholder Analysis ◾ 47
◾◾ existence of unsolved conflicts among diverse stakeholder

expectations;
◾◾ unawareness of constraints of all types (e.g., legal,
situational, environmental, organizational, business,
social, etc.);
◾◾ poor understanding and/or definition of project/stake-
holder requirements; and
◾◾ presence of discrepancies and/or inconsistencies between
stakeholder expectations and project/stakeholder
requirements.
It is evident that, in all the above cases, an effective stakeholder

analysis could significantly improve the situation in terms of
accuracy of project scope, care of stakeholder expectations, and,
ultimately, definition of a viable path toward project success.
Since stakeholder expectations are present in each of the
investment, project, and product life cycles, while stakeholder
requirements are present in project life cycle only, the first
step of a systemic approach to effective stakeholder analysis is
to determine properly the different cause/effect relations in the
whole investment life cycle, and, moreover, the different actors
and relevant perspectives that influence the project scenario
(see Figure 4.1).
In the first investment phase, there are three differ-
ent perspectives, which are the Investors, the Purchasers,
Figure 4.1 Different perspectives in project investment value chain.

and the Influencers: of course, since the Providers will just

be appointed in the following project phase, in this phase
they can be considered only as an undistinguished part of
Investors’ domain. All three above-mentioned stakeholder
communities define their own strategies in accordance with its
mission and vision, develop their business/social/other plans, to
realize their own strategies, and, then, define their own expec-
tations which come out from their plans: at this stage, if supply
and demand match, Purchasers and Investors communities
bring together their diverse, but considered as compatible,
expectations, formalize their agreement, in a contract or simi-
lar, so that project, with its requirements and its constraints,
comes alive.
This passage is crucial for future project success: diverse
“subjective” stakeholder expectations are somehow harmonized
in “objective” project requirements and constraints. While
the mediation between Purchasers’ and Investors’ expecta-
tions generate both project requirements and the triple con-
straint, i.e., states time-cost-quality in project scope, disparate
Influencers’ expectations should either generate other con-
straints (legal, normative, business, etc.), or, if insoluble con-
flicts are present, lead to prioritizing decisions that have to be
mutually agreed between Investors and Purchasers. If, here in
this passage, there are either mismatches, or misunderstand-
ings, or incompleteness, or inaccuracies, or mistakes of any
type, which are not properly solved via an efficient stakeholder
analysis, and, then, managed via an effective stakeholder
management, unavoidably, when project will be completed,
there will be a certain degree of stakeholder dissatisfaction,
and, therefore, of project failure.
In project phase, indeed, as we saw previously, there are
four different perspectives, which are those of Providers,
Investors, Purchasers, and Influencers. These perspectives are
different, but from now on, they are supposed to “share” a com-
mon view in terms of scope, requirements, constraints, objec-
tives, and deliverables. In fact, the project will be successful
only if its results will satisfy stakeholder expectations, which

are, on turn, inextricably linked to the stakeholder perception
that, in following product/service phase, when perspectives
will become three again, project goals will be achieved, and
expected benefits will be obtained. On the other hand, during
project phase, mismatches and/or misunderstandings about
stakeholder expectations will lead in discrepancies between
agreed project objectives and perceived project goals, so gener-
ating a high probability of project failure.
An effective stakeholder analysis has the purpose of properly
assessing stakeholder expectations, in accordance with their
different perspectives: behavioral classification in communi-
ties, as per previous chapter, is very helpful, in this case too,
to reduce complexity, and this usefulness is strengthened by
the fact that the expectations of the different stakeholder com-
munities target the product/service life cycle, and, then, tend to
remain constant in project life cycle, exactly as it happens for
their behaviors. For each stakeholder community, the effective
analysis can therefore be based on a systemic approach, which
focuses on cause-effect relationships: in all cases, relationships
between strategies, which are the causes, and the expectations,
which are the effects, are defined in the business and/or other
plans that stakeholders set up, and they are affected by the
internal and external environment, too (see Figure 4.2).
Figure 4.2 Cause/effect relation between strategies and stakeholder

expectations.
In Investors’ perspective, plans are generally business plans,

and, generally, they are available and/or accessible through the
project sponsor: Investors’ economic and financial expectations
rely on project, and on project follow up, and, then, influence
directly project objectives and triple constraint.
In contrast to Investors’ plans, those of Purchasers’ generally
are not available and accessible to project manager, and, then,
they look unknown and/or hidden. An in-depth study of both
customers and users business and/or social context, integrated
by discussions and interactive clarifications with Purchasers,
as well as, preferably, the development of some close personal
and professional relationships with key stakeholders, become
foundational to understand correctly their expectations, and,
afterwards, to monitor them properly. Purchasers’ expectations
concern mainly the product/service life cycle and, then, impact
directly on project goals, so their influence on project objectives
is indirect, but essential; definitively, analyzing Purchasers’
expectations is the hardest part of the work, but it is basic to
target project success.
Ultimately, Influencers’ plans are generally not evident too,
as per those of Purchasers’, but, since they are not directly
involved in the contract, their influence in the project does not
concern directly scope and objectives, although it proves to be
basic in establishing constraints of different types (legal, regula-
tory, environmental, etc.).
Potential conflicts and/or misunderstandings between dif-
ferent stakeholder expectations must be immediately solved,
and/or an agreed prioritization has to be made, just like ini-
tial scope and requirements have to be reviewed accordingly:
indeed, only the alignment of the diverse stakeholder expecta-
tions can guarantee a proper project development, and, ulti-
mately, an increase of the project success rate.
Definitively, in our today’s world, it becomes evident that
project manager competencies must include the manage-
ment of not only operational issues, but also of strategic issues,
which, furthermore, have to concern not just the domain of
his own organization, but even customers, users, and other

Influencers’ domains. A good understanding of these domains
may be facilitated, and accelerated, by some effective relations
with those key stakeholders, who, if properly engaged and self-
engaged, could help a lot: a successful key stakeholder manage-
ment, who can rely on an effective communication, becomes,
then, a powerful and foundational mean to target properly
project success.
Chapter 5
Key Stakeholders
Management: Principles
of Effective Direct
Communication
In all projects, relationships with key stakeholders, due to their

importance and/or to their potential impacts on the project
itself, have to be managed “closely” (see Chapter 3); these rela-
tionships must be then necessarily supported by “close” forms
of communications, effectiveness of which evidently requires
an approach that is mostly not only interpersonal, but also
direct. Above directness involves mainly two aspects: first one is
the “individuality” of communication, meaning that communi-
cation has to be in the form of one-to-one, or one-to-few, while
second one is the communication need of being not mediated.
Meanwhile, more generally, it is essential to clarify the
cause-effect link between stakeholder relations and com-
munications. Indeed, there is an unbreakable bond between
Project Stakeholder Management and Project Communications
Management processes, which are linked in a mutual support
relation; effective stakeholder management requires effective
53
Figure 5.1 Reinforcing loop with “snowball effect”.
communication, and effective communication is possible only

if relations with stakeholder are very good. Furthermore, the
importance of this relation is strengthened by the fact that,
during the project development, there can be several moments
in which communications may constitute the only deliverable
that can be actually delivered to key stakeholders.
Indeed, there is a virtuous circle that includes both stake-
holder relations and communication, which forms, in a sys-
tems thinking approach (Senge, 2006), a reinforcing loop: a
growth in stakeholder relations generates an increase of effec-
tive communication, and so on (see Figure 5.1), although, vice
versa, poor stakeholder relations generate inadequate com-
munication, and so on. In fact, effective communications in
stakeholder relations are basic for stakeholder satisfaction, and
may be this is one of the principal reasons about the project
managers and executives’ convincement that almost one-half
of unsuccessful projects have ineffective communication as the
main contributing factor (Project Management Institute, 2013).
But, still in a systems thinking approach, what are the
“Limits to Growth” (Senge, 2006) that have to be mitigated and/
or removed in order to allow effective project stakeholder,
and communications, management? The main limit to growth
that hampers the effective development of both stakeholder and
Key Stakeholders Management ◾ 55
communication management is the potential inadequacy of

project manager competencies. In fact, project managers need
not only specific brilliant soft skills in effective communication,
but also, since unavoidably the time spent in communication
is 80 percent or more of their total working time, they need
those excellent hard skills that will enable above soft skills to be
put into practice adequately, and for the proper time.
Indeed, it seems that, presently, there is a good awareness
about the essential role of communications, since, at first, four-
fifths of project managers and executives believe that commu-
nication is today more important for project success than it was
5 years before (Project Management Institute, 2017), and, more-
over, there are already some years that the lack or the inade-
quateness of project effective communication is considered one of
the main causes of project deemed failures (Project Management
Institute, 2013). Nevertheless, unfortunately, for many years,
and, specifically, up to when stakeholder became a subject group
(International Organization for Standardization, 2012), and project
stakeholder management became a knowledge area (Project
Management Institute, 2013), project communication manage-
ment was de facto considered, by the project management com-
munity, as “independent” from project stakeholder management.
In fact, first definition of project communications manage-
ment was that it “includes the processes required to ensure
timely and appropriate generation, collection, dissemina-
tion, storage, and ultimate disposition of project information”
(Project Management Institute, 1996), while current edition is
a bit more complete, but, in any case, lightly different, since it
states that “project communications management includes the
processes required to ensure timely and appropriate planning,
collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, manage-
ment, control, monitoring, and ultimate disposition of project
information” (Project Management Institute, 2017). Both defi-
nitions, indeed, are evidently focused on “information man-
agement”, rather than on “communication management”. The
main difference between communication and information is
that, while communication is a two or more way transfer that

involve human relations aspects, information can be limited to
a one-way rational transfer, which does not necessarily involve
any feedback or existence of personal relation. Maybe that this
sort of “misunderstanding” was, and still is, a contributing
factor to project inefficiencies and/or failures, since relation-
ships were not considered always essential, as definitively it
is proven they are, especially because they determine stake-
holder satisfaction. Indeed, the etymology of word “communi-
cation” is from Latin “communicatio”, roots of which indicate
“a common participation”, or “the action of letting someone
in on a subject”; therefore, from ancient times, the concept of
communication is bound to the sharing of information, rather
than their unidirectional broadcasting, and, then, the model of
communication is not purely linear, but absolutely interactive.
So, what is stakeholder communication? Basically, it is a
crucial, and constantly present, aspect of interaction among
stakeholders, and, then, it can be considered as a synonym of
behavior “In the perspective of pragmatics, all behavior, not
only speech, is communication, and all communication (even
the communicational clues in an impersonal context) affects
behavior” (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson, 1967). Five axi-
oms can help to describe properly the communication interac-
tive process (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson, 1967):
1. One cannot not communicate.

2. Every communication has a content and a relationship
aspect, such that the latter classifies the former, and is
therefore a metacommunication.
3. The nature of a relationship is contingent upon the punc-
tuation of the communicational sequences between the
communicants.
4. Human beings communicate both digitally and analogically.
5. All communicational interchanges are either symmetrical
or complementary, depending on whether they are based
on equality or difference.
The first axiom states that, since communication is a behavior,

and it is impossible not to behave, even not communicating
is, and is interpreted as, a specific communication strategy;
moreover, in general, everything a person does is a communi-
cation “activity or inactivity, words or silence all have message
value: they influence others and these others, in turn, cannot
not respond to these communications and are thus themselves
communicating” (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson, 1967). In
other words, and besides what might be thought, communica-
tion exists in all cases, either it is intentional or not, conscious
or not, purposeful or not, successful or not; the actual issue to
deal with is, then, “not communicating” or not, since second
alternative does not exist, but “communicating effectively”.
The second essential axiom states that each communica-
tion is characterized both by a level of content and by a level
of relationship, and in fact it is precisely the relationship level
that interprets the content level, so, ultimately, assessing which
content is really perceived and “how this communication is
to be taken”, since “all such relationship statements are about
one or several of the following assertions: this is how I see
myself…this is how I see you…this is how I see you seeing
me…” (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson, 1967). Definitively,
the content aspect matches with the information, while the
relationship aspect, which is a metacommunication since it
classifies the content level, is “an information about informa-
tion”; it is then evident that the relationship becomes essential
to develop effective communication.
The third axiom is concerned with the punctuations that
participants include in their communication sequences, which
correspond, and lead, to interpretations that can be very differ-
ent; in fact, punctuation organizes behavioral events, and, then,
it can be considered essential to ongoing interactions. Since, in
any communication act, “every item in the sequence is simul-
taneously stimulus, response, and reinforcement” (Bateson and
Jackson, 1964), each part of the communication sequence can
be interpreted, by different participants, as either a stimulus, or
a response, or a reinforcement, and, then, there is the risk that

disagreement about punctuations becomes the cause of count-
less and/or endless relationship struggles.
The fourth axiom states the importance of both verbal and
nonverbal communications, which are generally combined
together, to target the development of relationships; communi-
cation is digital when we use words to represent things, while
communication is analogic when we represent things via images
and/or via some forms that are related to the other senses. To
summarize, “digital language has a highly complex and powerful
logical syntax but lacks adequate semantics in the field of rela-
tionship, while analogic language possesses the semantics but
has no adequate syntax for the unambiguous definition of the
nature of relationships” (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson, 1967).
In the fifth axiom, communicative interactions are mapped
in either symmetrical or complementary, if correspondent
relationships are based, respectively, either on equality or on
difference. In symmetric communication, each participant
aims to mirror the behavior of the other, and both feel to be
at the same “level”, while, in complementary communication,
each participant complements the behavior of the other, and
four different reciprocal positions are possible, i.e., one-up,
one-down, “metacomplementary” (one lets or forces the
other to be in charge of him), and “pseudosymmetry”, (one
lets or forces the other to be symmetrical). Evidently, there
could be conflicts if either a participant does not accept and/
or recognize his role, or a participant wishes to change the
current situation.
Therefore, it is evident that, fortunately, since several decades
communication theory concentrate on the unique role of rela-
tionship, adaptations in a project context may be useful and
appropriate; in fact, communications between key stakeholders
can be represented with a communication interactive model
(which is an adaptation of Schramm’s model, 1955), where it is
possible to highlight the main factors that have to be addressed
in order to manage relations effectively (see Figure 5.2).
Figure 5.2 Interactive stakeholder communication model.
Communication flow is a continuum of communication ses-

sions, each one influencing the following ones and including
both contents, i.e., objective, and relationship, i.e., subjective,
aspects, and in which each stakeholder has alternatively the
role of sender and receiver. The transmitting stakeholder, who
has his/her own individual and organizational frame of refer-
ence, codes original content or information in a specific lan-
guage and format, and delivers the correspondent message in
a noisy medium/channel, which is, on its side, part of a spe-
cific communication environment that is necessarily common
between sender and receiver; then, receiving stakeholder, who,
from his/her part, has his/her own individual and organiza-
tional frame of reference, gets the message, decodes it, and
receives a perceived content/information, which, at this point,
will influence his/her following behavior resulting in a new
communication session in which he/she changes his/her role
from receiver to transmitter, and so forth.
Stakeholders introduce human factors in the relationship
process, and transform objective information in subjective,
either confirmed or distorted, communication, through their
personal and organizational frame of reference, which applies
a multiplicity of filters that may, at the same time, enhance,
minimize, or even delete, diverse parts of the original content.
In general, communication will be effective if stakeholder sub-
jectivity will succeed to positively value the original informative
contents. The concept of personal and organizational frame
of reference (that is somehow similar to Schramm’s “field of
experience”) is that each human being, who is continuously
bombed by thousands of elementary stimuli, selects and
categorizes, in order to manage and/or interpret the situation
carefully, only those stimuli that he personally believes, and/
or perceives, are important according to his own judgement.
Personal filters may include, but are not limited to, spoken
language, emotional and/or situational state, cultural and/or
historical and/or geographical and/or religious and/or personal
beliefs and/or socio-economic and/or familiar and/or health
context, concept of the self, cognitive skills, disturbs and

distractions, fatigue, age, previous experiences, personal style,
self-protection mode, etc., while organizational filters may
include, but are not limited to, business and career languages,
professional expectations and/or roles and/or levels of author-
ity, leadership, hard and soft skills, etc.
The coding process transforms contents, which have been
somehow filtered by personal and organizational frame of ref-
erence, in messages, which must have those characteristics that
are suitable to be properly delivered to the communication
channels and media, to make the stakeholder target reach-
able, and, at least theoretically, to give to him the capability,
after a proper decoding process, of correctly perceiving, and,
then, understanding, the message itself. Coding and decod-
ing processes are then essential to address a commonly reach-
able, and understandable, communication environment, and
they can achieve this goal only if they use shareable languages
and formats. A language, in order to be actually shareable,
at first, of course, must be derived by a spoken language that
can be understandable by both stakeholders, but, moreover, in
order to avoid misunderstandings and/or to reduce eventual
semantic noise, must contain also those elements that reflect the
specific languages of the relevant stakeholder communities. In
fact, as we saw in Chapter 3, each stakeholder community has
its own language, in which the same community recognizes
itself; for each stakeholder community, the choices of common
languages and formats are bold decisions, which correspond
to deep bonds in terms of identification, affiliation, and effi-
cient practice. Ultimately, the communication language to be
used, in order to be effective, should contain that combination
of natural, project management, economic, business, social,
bureaucratic, political, media, social media languages that cor-
respond to the two organizations of both the transmitting and
the receiving stakeholders.
Messages are those formatted and coded communication
items, which are exchanged between stakeholders via the
commonly available channels and media. There are informa-

tive messages, which of course constitute the core of stake-
holder communications, but there can be also other types of
messages, which support the effectiveness of stakeholder com-
munications: the feedback messages, which are very special
answer messages that return information about the delivery
and the receipt of sent messages, and management of which is
of extraordinary importance for communication effectiveness;
the feedforward messages, which have the purpose of antici-
pating at best messages to be sent; and the metamessages,
which are “messages about messages” that have the purpose
of a better tuning between end-to-end communications.
Furthermore, each communication between stakeholders
can exist if and only if there is a common communication
domain, which is the result of an intersection between the
two diverse stakeholders’ personal and organizational frames
of reference, and which contains both the channels and the
media that are mutually available to both stakeholders who
wish to communicate. Therefore, no communication is pos-
sible if a common domain either has not been established, or
become inactive, or it has been closed by at least one of the
communicating stakeholders. In fact, common communication
domains between stakeholders do not necessarily exist at proj-
ect start-up, and in this case, they have to be set up, as well as
these domains have an absolute dynamical nature, so that they
have to be maintained during whole project life cycle.
Setting up a common communication domain, namely
opening a communication, and maintaining live the same
common domain, namely keeping communication channels
open, are, in today’s world, two issues that are character-
ized not only by a foundational importance, but also by an
extraordinary sensitivity. In fact, globalization enhances mass
and impersonal communications much more than interper-
sonal communications, and people, in both their personal
and organizational domains, are generally reluctant and/
or suspicious toward establishing new relationships, and far
too careful in developing existing ones. In order to solve this

essential, but complex, problem, it is better to be very prag-
matic, and, then, to trace back that one of the core charac-
teristics of communications between key stakeholders is, as
we will see in more detail in the following, purposefulness;
i.e., each of these communications has some purpose and,
then, corresponds to some expectations. Therefore, an effec-
tive stakeholder analysis, which has as its results also the
evidence of different expectations and of their harmonization,
is a powerful tool to set up common communication domains.
Furthermore, as far as maintaining common communication
domains is concerned, we can trace back that, as previously
seen in this chapter, communication is behavior, and, then, if
we focus on behavioral stakeholder classification in communi-
ties, we have just four principal behaviors, i.e., the behaviors of
Providers, Purchasers, Investors, and Influencers, respectively,
which are almost constant in project life cycle. Indeed, con-
sidering the six intersections of these four frames of reference
can simplify a lot the maintaining of correspondent commu-
nication domains, and, then, may let to concentrate properly
on the most effective dynamics of communication channels
to be used.
Selecting and using properly communication channels is
foundational for each communication effectiveness; indeed,
above key tasks are the results of specific decisions that have to
be made based on both stakeholder and environment analy-
sis, and are not either routine or common sense activities.
Moreover, since relations with and among stakeholders are
evolutionary too, reaching and maintaining effective com-
munication requires also a monitoring approach, which is
based on active listening and observation, in order to address
a continuous learning from the feedbacks, and, more gener-
ally, a dynamic Plan–Do–Check–Act approach is absolutely
preferable.
Each stakeholder manages and perceives any communica-
tion, both in terms of content and in terms of relationship,
through his five senses, and, then, communication channels

have to be designed, planned, implemented, controlled, and
improved, accordingly. Naturally, the communication channels
that are most suitable for developing an effective communica-
tion address are either hearing, or sight, or a combination of
both, and may be pragmatically categorized in oral, paraver-
bal, non-verbal, written, and visual communication, while
communication channels based on touch, taste, and smell are
generally used not to develop, but mainly to support effective
professional communications. Both oral and written com-
munications constitute verbal communication, since they are
both based on the use of words (“verba” in Latin) to represent
material and immaterial concepts. As per fourth communica-
tion axiom (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson, 1967), verbal
communication represents the digital part of the communica-
tion, while nonverbal and paraverbal communication (which
may integrate oral communication) and visual communication
(which may integrate both oral and written communication)
represent the analogical part of communication.
Oral communication is based on voice, and is made of
conversations (from Latin verb “conversari”, which means “stay
together”) between two or more stakeholders, who can inter-
act either in a face-to-face modality, generally integrated with
nonverbal, paraverbal, and visual communications, or in a
remote modality, e.g., via call conferences, webinars, etc., or
via phone calls, which are purely vocal, but which are still
integrated with paraverbal communications. Due to its nature,
which is basically that of being a channel very interactive, rich
of information, and flexible, but volatile (Latin proverb states
“verba volant, scripta manent”, which means, “words come
and go; only the written word remains”), oral communication
is mainly indicated to develop the relationship part of com-
munication, and less indicated to agree contents. In general,
main advantages of oral communication may be interactivity,
flexibility, time and cost saving, possibility of getting feedbacks
quickly, better capabilities of persuasion and control, while
main disadvantages may include excess of emotions, lack of

consideration and/or of legal validity, difficulty in assessing
responsibilities, presence of confusing items and/or of less clar-
ity, and unavailability of reliable records. The large variety of
oral communication channels includes speeches, meetings,
presentations, seminars, webinars, talks, interviews, confer-
ences, formal and/or informal lunches and/or dinners, visits,
conventions, events, telephone calls, and conference calls; a
further, peculiar, but very effective, communication channel is
the provision of training (Gabassi, 2006).
A number of years have already passed since research
showed (Mehrabian, 1971) that perception of face-to-face mes-
sages is driven just 7% by spoken words, while 38% is driven
by paraverbal communication, and as many as 55% is driven
by nonverbal communication (i.e., body language), as well as,
in phone calls, where nonverbal communication goes obvi-
ously to zero, the importance of spoken words arises to 13%,
but that of paraverbal communication increases up to 87%;
paraverbal and nonverbal communication are, therefore,
someway dominant in interpersonal oral communications, and
this happens both in face-to-face and in purely vocal cases.
Paraverbal communication includes all those paralinguistic
aspects, both conscious and unconscious, which can modify,
enhance, and attenuate the meaning of an oral communica-
tion by influencing considerably its perception in the listeners.
There are several paralinguistic aspects that accompany each
vocal message, such as, for instance, the intonation, which
qualifies each statement in terms of communication intentions,
the use of different speeds and pauses, which are helpful to
emphasize the diverse parts of oral communication, the loud-
ness, which it is used not only to overcome distance, but also
to characterize the communication, the pitch, the timbre, and
also some specific forms of paralinguistic respiration, e.g.,
gasps, sighs, throat-clears, and “mhms”.
While paraverbal communication focuses more on giv-
ing meanings to the messages, nonverbal communication
is mainly used to validate speeches; in fact, although human

beings, if compared with other species, developed an incred-
ibly sophisticated communication system based on voice, the
sense of sight is still preferred because of its better objec-
tive reliability. Paraverbal communication is often synonym
of body language (Pease and Pease, 2004); posture (while
sitting, standing, talking, listening, etc.), facial expressions
(especially eyes and mouth movements, and their coherency),
gesture (symbolic, to replace words, but also to show empha-
sis, satisfaction, stress, comfort, adaptation, anger, etc.—and
their contraries), proxemics (effects due to distance, position,
and man’s use of the space—Hall, 1982), dress code, etc. are
extraordinary supports, both conscious and unconscious, of a
vocal message, and contribute significantly to its effectiveness—
or to its failure. Interpretation of body language can be basic
also to understand if a speaker is lying. In fact, since most
of the people have a certain ancestral capability to perceive
some body language signals, it is highly risky to expose things
that are far from reality, or to present “images” rather than the
“selves”, since listeners could catch some deviations and, then,
refuse the whole communication. Ultimately, in any case, it
would be very important, for project managers, in order to
improve the effectiveness of their communication, to have also
some skills in body language, and, if possible, in NLP—Neuro
Linear Programming (Bandler and Grindler, 1982) too.
Written communication is another verbal form of communi-
cation; due to its intrinsic solidity and stability, written commu-
nication is particularly indicated to agree contents, and it is less
indicated to develop the relationship part of communication. In
written communication, stakeholders interact, in deferred time,
through the exchange of written messages, including emails,
letters, all types of documents (reports, proposals, minutes,
memos, etc.), and, although, in professional environment,
with a quite limited use that is subordinated to other forms of
communication, also by exchanging social media and mobile
technology messages. Written communication can be effectively
integrated with visual communication, since the association of

words to images may have both a greater informative impact
(“a picture is worth a thousand words”), and a better liking. In
interpersonal communication, above-mentioned integration is
common in all type of documents, in dashboards and score-
cards, in slides for presentations, and, although this applies
mainly in impersonal communications, in brochures, flyers,
posters, and other type of printings; moreover, an appropri-
ate choice of the communication environment (location, meet-
ing room, etc.) can be extraordinary helpful. Main advantages
of written communication are its validity, its unobtrusiveness,
its stability, the easiness of permanent recording, the possibility
of producing it anytime and anywhere, while main disadvan-
tages may be both time and cost that are required, the delay
of feedbacks, the absence of flexibility, the difficulty of making
changes, the substantial neutrality and “coldness” with respect
to the relationship, and, in document and reports, the possibility
of information overload.
Additional forms of communication that address the other
three senses, as touch, taste, and smell, can become either a
great support to interpersonal professional communications, if
everything goes well, or a disaster in the relationships, if they,
or their results, are not appreciated. In fact, in general, this
variety of communications, including shaking of hands, giv-
ing somebody high five, putting hand/arm on shoulder, hug-
ging, kissing, having lunch/dinner together, sharing perfumes/
odors, etc., can break down some barriers in favor of better
personal relationships … or lead exactly to the opposite effect
(for instance, in several important cultures, people do not like
to be touched at all).
Indeed, communication medium, which is part of the
common communication environment, is shared between the
stakeholders, and, of course, it has to be available, accessible,
reliable, and … less noisy as possible. In fact, all commu-
nication media introduce noise, which can distort the mes-
sage, up to the point of affecting its meaning, or of making it
unintelligible, and, then, a preventive attention to this issue is

essential, too, in order to minimize possible interferences. From
the noise point of view, if communication medium consists in
another stakeholder, this is the most risky situation, since people
aim to add their own value and/or contribute, then tending to
distort communications. Ultimately, in general, we may distin-
guish three main types of noise: physical noise, e.g., rumors
that affect talks, irrelevant/wrong messages, illegible handwrit-
ing, blurred type, fonts that are difficult to read, misspellings,
and poor grammar; physiological noise, e.g., degradations such
as loss of vision, and/or hearing; and semantic noise, e.g., when
medium is not actually located in common communication
zone, and/or coding/decoding errors are present.
Finally, to complete the overview on the stakeholder inter-
personal communication model, there are some topics that
are specific for either the transmitting or the receiving stake-
holder. At first, all project communication are purposeful, and,
then, transmitting stakeholder has to convince, or to persuade,
receiving stakeholder about the quality of his communication.
Even though project management literature focuses mainly
on project communication as a mean to transmit (and other)
project information, several other basic purposes are possible
for project communication:
◾◾ providing project information;

◾◾ obtaining project information and/or data and informa-
tion that are relevant to the project;
◾◾ requesting an action, and/or preventing an action, and/or
starting an action, and/or changing an action;
◾◾ providing support to decision, and/or advising, and/or
consulting;
◾◾ learning, and/or facilitating learning;
◾◾ setting up and/or improving relationships.
Whatever the purpose of the communication is, convincing the

recipient stakeholder about the quality of the communication,
in order to influence his following behavior, requires persua-

sion skills, and the ability of making use of those “weapons
of influence” that can generate in him a sort of “psychological
positive automatic response” (Cialdini, 2007):
◾◾ reciprocation (“the old give and take … and take”). The

perception of receiving, as it is a gift, something unex-
pected, stimulate both positive engagement and the wish
to somehow reciprocate; this type of response can be
initiated, for instance, by offering and/or proposing some-
thing of a perceivable value “first”;
◾◾ commitment and consistency (“hobgoblins of the mind”).
Defining properly both commitments and relevant consis-
tent rewards greatly stimulates positive engagement;
◾◾ social proofs (“truths are us”). Presenting a community in
which experts, and/or satisfied users, and/or networking,
and/or celebrities are included, and stimulating the sense
of belonging to it, can be a great support to stakeholder
engagement and/or approval and/or action;
◾◾ liking (“the friendly thief”). Liking principle generates
positive responses through factors as empathy, friendship,
attractiveness, cooperation, etc.;
◾◾ authority (“directed deference”).This principle is based on
the fact that people aim to follow credible experts, man-
agers, technologists, or, in general, professionals who look
like they know what they are saying; and
◾◾ scarcity (“the rule of the few”). Things that are rare, or
available with difficulty, are commonly considered bet-
ter than the others are; showing an approach of “unicity”
versus the receiving stakeholder may become a success
factor in the communication.
Another skill of greatest importance that is specific for receiv-

ing stakeholders, but that is needed for transmitting stakehold-
ers too, is the capability of active listening and observation.
In general, active listening, which in project management
literature is defined as the set of techniques including

“acknowledging, clarifying and confirming, understanding,
and removing barriers that adversely affect comprehension”
(Project Management Institute, 2017), together with active
observation, require to be approachable, tolerant, acceptant,
receptive, assertive, attentive, respective for the speaker, and
for his verbal/paraverbal/nonverbal behavior, and all that, in
case of face to face communication, by ensuring and main-
taining a constant contact (including eye contact) too.
Definitively, the essential issue of initiating, developing,
maintaining, and improving an effective communication with
key stakeholders, in order to manage successfully the relation-
ships with them, requires a comprehensive set of interpersonal
skills, which should include, without being necessarily limited
to, the following:
◾◾ awareness that key stakeholders are persons (and not

transmitting/receiving devices!), with their own roles and
expectations, requiring also a consequent capability of
expressing (not only feeling!) respect for each of them and
for them all;
◾◾ capability of expressing respect for stakeholder contents
and issues too, also by signaling availability to the listen-
ing, receptiveness, acceptance, understanding, and by
making questions and/or asking information;
◾◾ awareness that we are all stakeholders, and that, at the
same time, we are not the shareholders, i.e., the owners,
of the relationship, and consequent capability of behaving
accordingly;
◾◾ awareness that stakeholders may be interested to our
own contents, but they usually feel bothered if we report
third parties’ contents, as much as they may be interested
to our professional self, but they usually feel bothered if
we show an “image” of it (that, anyway, could be dis-
carded as “false” by paraverbal and nonverbal language
interpretation);
◾◾ awareness that stakeholders may have different individual

and organizational frames of reference and use diverse
languages, and consequent capabilities of both pulling
our own frame of reference off-center in order to tune
in theirs, and using their own business/organizational/
spoken (this latter if possible) language, also in terms of
goals, risks, and opportunities, and in verbal, paraverbal,
and nonverbal terms;
◾◾ awareness that each communication is an exchange of
contents, and consequent capability of leaving always
something available to other stakeholders contributes,
because this will support communication effectiveness;
◾◾ capability of being open mind, also abandoning preju-
dices and mental models, and of building shared visions;
◾◾ capability of understanding the other stakeholder scope,
of identifying, and/or avoiding, and/or removing eventual
blocks and/or barriers, and of targeting/reaching harmon-
ically common agreeable solutions;
◾◾ awareness of stakeholder feeling that they do never have
time, and that their available time may be asynchronous
with respect to other needs and vice versa, with conse-
quent capabilities of being synthetic, by going directly
to the point, being clear and concise (also by preparing
executive summaries and/or dashboards, and minimizing
introductions and/or prefaces), and, in general, by plan-
ning and managing the times of the relationship (without
being managed by them);
◾◾ capability of being analytic, distinguishing facts from
opinions, and/or causes from effects, being also neutral
versus emotions;
◾◾ capability of organizing and managing the appropriate
communication environment, taking care of reception,
interactivity, and privacy, minimizing noises, and setting
up a balanced mix of formality and informality;
◾◾ capability of taking commitment to answer, and, then,
answering coherently and appropriately;
◾◾ capability of being always positive (glass is always half-

full, and is never half-empty!);
◾◾ awareness that stakeholders prefer to hear proposals that
target success, rather than problems to be solved (espe-
cially the problems that we are supposed to solve);
◾◾ awareness that the choice of the titles determines both the
attitude and the attention of stakeholders, and consequent
capability to define the titles properly;
◾◾ awareness that stakeholders may be/are interested in
a possible engagement for present and future times,
while they do normally perceive communications about
past times, in which they were not present, just as self-
referential; and
◾◾ awareness that a confusing communication is very risky,
and that it could be useful just to gain some time.
As a conclusion of this chapter, I propose the following para-

digm for effective communication:
“we should communicate ourselves, but in the language of
others”.
In this way, other people will appreciate that we are true
persons, who expose contents in which we believe … and,
since we are using their language, they should understand
what we do mean too, so that, definitively, communication
will reach its purpose.
Chapter 6
Stakeholder Network
Management:
Informative
and Interactive
Communication
Direct interpersonal communication is essential for managing

closely relations with key stakeholders, but, since it is expen-
sive in terms of both time and effort, it cannot be extended
easily, effectively, and efficiently to other non-key stakehold-
ers. In fact, we saw in previous chapters that, in each project,
the stakeholders’ relations are characterized by an intrinsic
multilevel complexity, and this is also because stakehold-
ers are numerous, and their relations influence each other.
Therefore, we have not only many relations with stakehold-
ers to manage, but also a large variety of relations among
stakeholders to monitor, and this makes quite difficult and/or
impossible to use forms of direct communication with the total-
ity of non-key stakeholders too. The above-mentioned commu-
nication indirectness involves mainly two aspects: first is the
73
“plurality” of communication, meaning that communications

with non-key stakeholders are generally in the form either of
one-to-many, in case we refer to the project manager commu-
nicating with all other stakeholders, or many-to-many, if we
refer to communications among stakeholders; second aspect
is the communication need of being channeled and someway
mediated, which is presently and actually solved by the large
domain of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC).
Nowadays, indeed, we are all interconnected, and, of,
course, this is valid for stakeholders too; all stakeholders are
networked, and this was a sort of “silent revolution” in manag-
ing project communications, which had, and has, a consid-
erable impact on project success, and also on project risks,
i.e., on both opportunities and threats. The above-mentioned
“silent revolution” happened because the original, and still
principal, goal of project communication is sending prop-
erly project information, i.e., contents, rather than developing
interactive relationships with stakeholders, and this led, in
project management, to forms of “cold” communications that
were basically thought as “impersonal” and characterized by
a very limited interaction, while the apparent paradox of the
network is that, although it is a “cold” additional technologi-
cal mediation, it realizes indeed the individual addressability
and connectivity, then allowing a new “warmer” interper-
sonal interaction among people, i.e., stakeholders. However,
to go in depth about this issue, it is important to make an
overview about the complex, often ambiguous, and someway
difficult, relation between project communications and project
management.
In general, starting from the early beginning (Project
Management Institute, 1996), communications in project man-
agement were mainly focused on the broadcasting of proj-
ect information, mostly in the formats of reports, and, more
recently, in the formats of dashboards and/or scorecards too
(Kerzner, 2015). While almost everybody agrees today that
the weight of relationships is determinant for communication
Stakeholder Network Management ◾ 75
efficacy, although the presence of qualified contents is any-

way necessary, above form of communication is evidently
cold, purely informative, few interactive, and very similar to
other forms of vertical and/or hierarchical, communication,
which all have the problem of leaving unchanged, and/or even
increasing, both the distance and the barriers between sender
and receivers. Although the emergence of interactive forms
of communication and, especially, the accreditation of both
stakeholder as a subject group (International Organization for
Standardization, 2012) and of project stakeholder management
as a knowledge area (Project Management Institute, 2013)
gave a strong positive impetus on relationships improvement,
the present vision of the recipient stakeholders as few interac-
tive participants in the communication is still almost exactly
the same of more than twenty years ago (Project Management
Institute, 1996 and 2017): “The receiver is responsible for ensur-
ing that the information is received in its entirety, interpreted
correctly, and acknowledged or responded to appropriately”.
The above-mentioned perspective, on the one side, hinders
effectiveness of communication, which of course is, as almost
all other project issues are, a responsibility of project man-
ager, on the other, encourages at most limited feedbacks,
rather than, as we saw in previous chapter, a useful exchange
of information (including, e.g., obtaining project information
and/or data and information that are relevant to the project,
requesting an action, and/or preventing an action, and/or start-
ing an action, and/or changing an action, providing support
to decision, and/or advising, and/or consulting, learning, etc.).
Indeed, while, on the one hand, the forms of project commu-
nications that have been someway prioritized included uni-
lateral, impersonal “broadcast” of reports; on the other hand,
the Internet, by offering a common medium that supports
several evolutionary forms of CMC, overwhelms traditional
approaches. All stakeholders are now individually addressable,
interaction is embedded, although quite often with a certain
time delay, and the shareable information are powered, since
they may include also project “promotional” information, and,

moreover, useful lessons learned.
Therefore, Interactive Stakeholder Communication Model
evolves and spreads in a stakeholder network; in each project,
communication streams are originated by each stakeholder
community, flow in common media, are exchanged, stimu-
late other communication streams, and so on (see Figure 6.1).
Indeed, communications with and among stakeholders are, of
course, absolutely complex, but the segmentation of stakehold-
ers in four communities drastically reduces the complexity
in their management, because the huge domain of commu-
nications with and among stakeholders, can be represented
by six basic communication streams, which are, respec-
tively, suppliers–purchasers, suppliers–investors, suppliers–
influencers, purchasers–investors, purchasers–influencers,
and investors–influencers, and which relate each other via an
actual network, i.e., the stakeholder network.
It is important to be aware that stakeholder network
(Pirozzi, 2017) has specific characteristics, which have to be
managed carefully; indeed, the network is not neutral with
respect to the project, and it may turn out to be either the
originator, or the amplifier, of both great opportunities and
critical threats. In fact, stakeholder network:
◾◾ is a fast multiplier of the stakeholder satisfaction and dis-

satisfaction messages, then generating a snowball effect
about their feelings versus the project; marketing literature
generally reports that a satisfied stakeholder communi-
cates it on average to three others, while a dissatisfied
stakeholder communicates it on average to other ten,
and these phenomena on the network are substantially
immediate;
◾◾ is multilingual, since it carries messages in different lan-
guages, including project management language, business
languages, economic languages, media language, natural
languages, spoken languages, social media languages,
Figure 6.1 The stakeholder network.
paralanguages, etc., and it allows a large variety of mul-

tiple and/or integrated, and/or hybrid formats too;
◾◾ although its life cycle basically coincides with the proj-
ect life cycle, since it was born with the project and it
evolves over time with it, a part of the network was evi-
dently already alive in previous investment life cycle, and
another part will survive even after the project completion,
in project/product/service life cycle; the above-mentioned
“long life” has significant and/or potentially critical
impacts on both the management of project stakeholder
relations and on the success of the project itself, as we
will see in the following chapters;
◾◾ is both informative and interactive, and has a 2.0 behav-
ior through and through;
◾◾ is not controlled by any project stakeholder (much less by
the project manager!), but it is continuously influenced by
all stakeholders; stakeholder network is extremely noisy,
since communications among stakeholders seriously affect
each other, and monitoring relations among stakehold-
ers becomes essential to manage effectively relations with
stakeholders; and
◾◾ is asymmetric, e.g., while providers generally transmit
reports that include somehow large amount of data, and
that are characterized by a consistent information rich-
ness, they often receive from other communities of stake-
holders relatively few information, even if these are of
high quality and/or of high importance.
In stakeholder network, CMCs, which include a large variety of

messages, e.g., e-mails, text/visual/video/audio/hybrid social
media messages, instant messages, video/audio/text chats,
websites, online forums, blogs, wikis, phone calls, etc., are
numerically the major part of communications. Nowadays
CMCs became, in most cases, either essential itself or an essen-
tial support for communications with, and among, the four
communities of stakeholders, i.e., the Providers, the Purchasers,
the Investors, and the Influencers. For better or worse, CMCs

are not only “transient, multimodal, with few codes of conduct
governing use, and allowing for a high degree of end-user
manipulation of content” (McQuail, 2010), but these are also
fast, irreversible, recordable, extremely numerous, and often
evolving and/or mutating, both in their formats and in the
language/paralanguage that they use.
In case of communication with key stakeholders, who gen-
erally include project team, customers, project sponsor, and
top management, while interpersonal direct communication,
especially in the form of face to face communication, as we saw
in previous chapter, due to both its information richness and
its orientation toward the development of the relationships, can
be considered at top of effectiveness, CMCs (with the excep-
tion of video chats/conferences, which can be considered as
a “lower quality” face-to face communication), are in any case
of extraordinary importance, to support initiating, developing,
and maintaining interpersonal communications. CMCs are, in
fact, minimally invasive, and their use both decreases the pos-
sibility of making fatal communication mistakes and increases
the possibility of succeeding in the organization of appoint-
ments, meetings, shareable agendas, and so on. Specifically,
CMCs are a powerful help both to initiate interpersonal com-
munications, since today a greatest communication risk is that
in cases a previous interpersonal relationship does not exist,
stakeholders tend to let not opening a communicative relation,
and to maintain communications, since their use can be quite
continuous, but still cheap and a little invasive. On the other
side, we see an overuse of CMC, and specifically of e-mails,
in communications with key stakeholders; the easiness of a
quick addressing, due in particular to the button “answer to
all”, can often lead to a correspondent easiness of altering the
appropriate sequence of recipients, then generating the risk
of inefficiently confusing “ for action” and “ for information”
stakeholders addressees. Furthermore, due to the facts that both
incoming e-mails, if they do not answer to a specific request,
are generally associated with routine information, and that

e-mails tend to generate in our daily personal and professional
lives spamming and/or information overload, there is the great-
est risk that their content is not considered as important, or
not processed at all. In addition, CMCs necessarily require the
use of a synthetic written language, which unavoidably filters
all those paraverbal and nonverbal elements that are essential
in effective communication with key stakeholders, often intro-
duces semantic noise, and even increases enormously the risk
of fatal mistakes and/or misunderstandings in those phases in
which careful negotiating and/or managing of conflicts are
needed. Definitively, in case of communicating with key stake-
holders, CMCs may be a powerful support to interpersonal
direct communications, but they can never replace them, espe-
cially if there is the need of exchanging important information.
Anyway, in case of communications with non-key stake-
holders, stakeholder network and CMC are a great opportunity
of usability and efficacy, and moreover, in case of commu-
nications with the community of Influencers, they are almost
always the unique possible way to reach them. Project commu-
nications spread to a larger domain of stakeholders, and this
may be a further opportunity to support the project success by
both promoting and defending the reputation of project itself.
Indeed, in last years, the phenomenon of the trend of a con-
tinuously increasing importance, especially in large and major
projects, of those stakeholders who are not directly contracting
parties, but who are affected and/or feel to be affected by the
project, led to the inclusion, in the domain of those stakehold-
ers whose satisfaction is a critical success factor for the project,
of the behavioral community of Influencers, too. In fact, the
diverse worlds of culture, communication, instruction, politics,
public health, non-profit organizations, including local com-
munities, the web communities, the associations, the trade
unions, the media, the authorities, the central and local public
administration, the regulatory bodies, the potential customers
and users, the participants and the candidates to participate in
the project, can very rapidly become either great supporters, or

relentless opponents, of the project, and moreover, each of the
above-mentioned influencers can switch from one role to its
opposite as quickly.
Therefore, especially in major, large, and complex projects,
after the ever-present traditional reporting, and the finally-
recognized-as-basic interpersonal direct communication with
key stakeholders, a third main type of stakeholder commu-
nication emerged decisively: the project relations, or project
marketing (Bourne, 2015). Project relations involve both infor-
mative and interactive communications, and the main pur-
poses of this type of communications are
◾◾ adding value to the project, by positively informing stake-

holder network, mainly about project’s scope, core and
boundaries of which may be unclear, and about project
progress, and, moreover, by promoting project’s reputation,
which became one of the major “competing constraints”
(Kerzner, 2015), as much as the brand’s reputation of the
organization that realizes the project;
◾◾ preventing, to the greatest extend possible, misinformation,
false expectations, and all kinds of rumors, by using the
power of effective information; and
◾◾ defending, in almost real-time, the reputation of the
project, the project manager, the project team, and the
organization, from every type of attack and/or improper
influence, and satisfying additional or deeper stakeholder
information needs that may occur, by monitoring continu-
ously stakeholder network, and by interacting with it as
soon as possible from the perception of an event.
A further extraordinary potential usefulness of stakeholder net-

work is the capability of enhancing the lessons learned which are
available in each organization with those contents that are share-
able on web-hosted knowledge bases. Great global independent
websites as PM World Journal https://pmworldjournal.com/ and
PM World Library https://pmworldlibrary.net/, as much as the

websites of both International and National Project Management
Associations, have a very important role, and may have an
even major one, in spreading and enhancing both the discipline
and the culture of project management, and they should be
encouraged as much as possible.
Definitively, since the stakeholder network is not neutral
with respect to the project, and it may turn out to be either the
originator or the amplifier of both great opportunities and crit-
ical threats, project manager cannot be neutral, and cannot
act neutrally, versus the stakeholder network itself, which has
to be respected and properly addressed. In general, in major
and/or large and/or complex projects, while the design, the
organization, the development, and the improvement of an
appropriate project relations campaign may require specific
skills, project managers must have at least those 1.0 and 2.0
competencies that allow continuous and effective monitoring
and interaction with stakeholder network. Ultimately, project
manager should
◾◾ deal with the stakeholder network as it is a project in the

project, by initiating, planning, implementing, controlling,
and closing all the necessary communicative actions, in
order not only to be influenced by the stakeholder network,
but also to influence it;
◾◾ communicate effectively also by using with each stake-
holder a common shared language, so learning, using as
appropriate, and improving the basic languages that are
needed beyond project management language, includ-
ing the languages of customers and/or users business, of
general management, of economics, of worldwide web, of
social/and or other media;
◾◾ manage appropriately the relationships with both key
stakeholders, by using interpersonal direct communication
as primary, and non-key stakeholders, by using CMC as
primary;
◾◾ take into account that stakeholder network is alive, evolu-

tive, that it was born in the investment life cycle before the
project was, and that it will survive also in the product/
service life cycle after project completion;
◾◾ develop and/or maintain competencies in terms of pro-
active monitoring of stakeholder network, including the
essential capacities of detecting the signals of satisfaction
and/or dissatisfaction, of amplifying weak signals and/
or of performing checks of satisfaction/dissatisfaction, of
defending reputation, of answering in almost real time,
of conveying appropriate project information, of defin-
ing/measuring/sharing with stakeholders appropriate key
performance indicators (KPIs), of managing relationships
with hostile and/or negative stakeholders too, by commu-
nicating those information that tend to cause their disen-
gagement, and their dissatisfaction; and
◾◾ manage effectively the quality of information, by sup-
porting the project with appropriate and well-presented
information and by combating fake and/or negative infor-
mation, the quantity of information, by preparing appro-
priate executing summaries, dashboards, scorecards, and
by avoiding phenomena of information overload, and the
communicative mix, by integrating appropriately informa-
tive, interactive, interpersonal, direct, computer mediated,
face-to-face, remote, verbal, non-verbal, vocal, written,
audio, visual, hybrid communications.
Managing relationships with stakeholders is evidently very

complex, and, then, every project manager should neces-
sarily add to high competencies in effective communication,
which are foundational for initiating, developing, and manag-
ing effective communications with the various stakeholders,
those basic personal and interpersonal skills in terms of per-
sonal mastery, leadership, and teaming, which are necessary
for his/her optimal, both personal/professional and organiza-
tional, behavior.
Chapter 7
Basic Personal and

Interpersonal Skills:
Personal Mastery,
Leadership, Teaming
Managing effectively both relationships and communications

with stakeholders who have so diverse interests, expecta-
tions, and characteristics requires modern and advanced
interpersonal skills; however, the development of interper-
sonal skills is not only a consequence of learning of tools,
methodologies, and techniques, but it relies on a continuous
individual learning path that is based on increasing per-
sonal knowledge, abilities, and experience, and, then, the
ownership and the continuous improvement of personal skills
are needed, too. Personal skills and interpersonal behavior
integrate in a “professional self”, whose basic continuous-
learning approach to stakeholders has to be the result of
the growth of both “how to be” and “how to behave” skills;
therefore, personal mastery is essential to improve organiza-
tional behavior too, and it becomes the foundation also for
developing those leadership and teamwork that are crucial
85
elements of project management starting from its early

beginning up to today.
Personal mastery is one of those four core disciplines (the
others are mental models, shared vision, and team learning) of
learning organizations that are integrated in the fifth discipline
“System Thinking”, and it can be defined as “the discipline of
continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of
focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing
reality objectively” (Senge, 2006). Although personal mastery is
based on both the development of competencies and/or skills,
and on spiritual growth, it goes beyond all of them (Senge,
2006) in the direction of proficiency; indeed, it integrates two
perspectives that are foundational in managing stakeholder
relationships, communication, and project itself, which are,
first, the focus on objectives to be achieved, i.e., answering to
the question “what is really important”, and, second, the con-
tinuous learning approach based on the clear and updated
assessment of the reality, i.e., answering to the question “what
is real”. Actually, in stakeholder relationship management, the
assessment of the real situation is fundamental in stakeholder
identification and analysis processes, while focus on objectives
to be achieved and to expectations to be satisfied is essential in
stakeholder management processes.
Moreover, personal mastery is the basic state to enable
that self-awareness, which is not only one of the four domains
of emotional intelligence but also the foundation of the other
three, i.e., personal management, social-awareness, and rela-
tionship management. The above-mentioned emotional intel-
ligence groups of competencies are crucial for leadership, and
specifically for that resonant leadership, which represents the
great and effective ability of connecting personally with the fol-
lowers (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, 2002) and/or, in proj-
ect management, with the stakeholders. In fact, each one of the
four emotional intelligence domains interacts with others (see
Figure 7.1) and includes a set of core leadership competencies,
as follows.
Basic Personal and Interpersonal Skills ◾ 87
Figure 7.1 The emotional intelligence leadership competencies.
The personal competencies refer to the capabilities of

managing ourselves, and they consist in self-awareness and
self-management competence groups. The self-awareness
competencies group includes the emotional self-awareness,
which is the ability of understanding own emotions, of esti-
mating their possible impacts, and of using “gut sense” as a
decision-making support, the accurate self-assessment, which
is the ability of understanding personal strengths and weak-
nesses, and the self-confidence, a sound sense of personal
value and capabilities. The self-management competencies
group includes emotional self-control (the ability of keeping
under control all kinds of emotion, especially the disrup-
tive ones), transparency (the ability of demonstrating ethics
and trustworthiness), adaptability (the ability of being flex-

ible in order to adapt to different situations and to overcome
obstacles), achievement (the capacity of continuous personal
improvement toward excellence), initiative (the ability of react-
ing properly and quickly to events and of being proactive
too), and optimism (the ability of getting the upside in every
situation).
The social competencies refer to the capabilities of man-
aging relationships with others, and they consist in social
awareness and relationship management competence
groups. Social awareness competence group includes empathy
(the ability of understanding the emotions and the perspec-
tives of the others, and of acting accordingly in the direction
of their satisfaction), organizational awareness (the capability
of understanding both external and internal organizational
environments) and service (the capability of understand-
ing and meeting follower, client, or customer needs [and, in
project management domain, stakeholder needs and expec-
tations]). The relationship management competence group
includes competencies and skills that can be all directly
related to project management, and that all are of extraor-
dinary importance in it, such as change catalyst, developing
others (coaching), and, above all, conflict management,
inspirational leadership, teamwork and collaboration, and
influence.
Influence is a foundational concept of leadership:
“Leadership is influencing people to take action. In the work-
place, leadership is the art of getting work done through
other people. Leadership can be widely distributed within
an organization—most everyone leads at some time or
other, if not all the time. And it’s highly situational: anyone
might step forward to lead, given the right circumstances”
(Goleman, 2012). Leadership and influencing are key points
in project management literature starting from its early
beginning. In the first edition of PMBOK Guide (Project
Management Institute, 1996), leading involves establishing
direction, aligning people, motivating and inspiring, while

influencing the organization involve the capability of “get
things done”. Presently, in the sixth edition of PMBOK Guide
(Project Management Institute, 2017), “leadership skills
involve the ability to guide, motivate, and direct a team”,
and Leadership is, together with Strategic and Business
Management, and Technical Project Management, one of
the sides of the PMI Talent Triangle™, which is consid-
ered by Project Management Institute the ideal skill set—
while influencing is specifically one of the major leadership
competencies, together with brainstorming, coaching and
mentoring, conflict management, interpersonal skills, listen-
ing, negotiation, problem solving, team building, and, conve-
niently, emotional intelligence.
In this book, we consider that leadership competencies are
effectively applicable not only to the traditional domain of those
specific key stakeholders, who form the project team, but also,
in a much greater sense, to the whole domain of project stake-
holders. Indeed, leadership skills are not only put into practice
by the project manager and/or, if this is the case, by other stake-
holders, but they are also perceived, and quite immediately
recognized, by all stakeholders. This usually happens mainly
either via verbal, paraverbal, and nonverbal language, whether
an interpersonal direct relationship exists, or via records,
writings, information about reputation and/or satisfaction of
expectations, in case of the other non-key part of stakeholder
network is involved. Definitively, leadership is basic to gener-
ate trust, and, then, to manage effectively relations with all
types of stakeholders.
Practicing leadership in project management requires the
flexibility that is necessary to adapt to the different stakehold-
ers and/or situations, so that leadership repertoire of project
manager should include the six leadership styles: visionary,
coaching, affiliative, and democratic, which are the “resonant”
ones, plus pacesetting and commanding, which can be very
useful and/or necessary in some specific situation, but which
often have negative impact on the working environment

(Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, 2002). In more detail:
◾◾ The visionary style is best when a new, or a clearer,

direction is needed: it motivates people versus achiev-
ing common goals, by using competences of empathy,
self-esteem, sharing of information, and the capability of
catalyzing changes, and it has a strongly positive impact
on climate. It may be less effective in case of highly
experienced people, who can consider it redundant,
and unnecessary.
◾◾ The coaching style is best to help people to enhance their
medium-term performances via building their long-term
capabilities, connecting personal and organizational
goals, and sharing strengths and weaknesses: it uses
mainly the competencies of self-awareness, empathy, and
human resource management, and it has a highly posi-
tive impact on climate. It may be less effective in case of
people who are not so much motivated in their profes-
sional growth, and, since it has medium-term positive
effects, when time constraints are strict; moreover, there is
the risk that if this style is not realized properly, it may be
perceived by people as micro-management, and then, it
may be refused by them.
◾◾ The affiliative style is best to get through stressful situations,
and/or to strengthen relations, and/or to heal eventual
rifts: it creates, and increases, harmony by using mainly
the competencies of empathy and effective relationships
management, and by connecting people to each other,
and it has a positive impact on climate. It may be less
effective when there are strict objectives in terms of qual-
ity to be incorporated, and/or of people growth, and/or
of mistakes to be corrected.
◾◾ The democratic style is best to obtain inputs and/or
approvals from people: it values the inputs of the peo-
ple and it obtains their commitment and contributions
through the participation, by using mainly the competen-

cies of effective communication and of enhancing coop-
eration, and it has a positive impact on climate. It may not
be so much effective in case it leads to endless meetings
and/or to a certain degree of indecision.
◾◾ The pacesetting style is best to achieve results from an
already motivated and competent team: it builds and
meets for people exciting goals and/or challenges, which
generally represent excellence, by using mainly the com-
petencies of effective guidance toward objectives to be
achieved, of initiative, and of thoroughness. Since it is a
lot demanding from everybody, it can depress less com-
petent and/or motivated people that suffer comparisons,
and since it is so often poorly managed, its impact on
climate may be frequently highly negative, and it has to
be used carefully.
◾◾ The commanding style is best when there are either start-
up, or critical, or involving big changes situations, and/or
when there are unresponsive and/or problematic people
involved, and/or when time to act and/or react is very
limited: it gives clear directives, and it demands that they
are promptly and duly satisfied, moreover it requires the
acknowledgment of the power and/or the role, and it uses
mainly the competencies of self-control, of initiative, and
of effective guidance toward objectives to be achieved.
Since it tends to inhibit flexibility, and to decrease the
people’s motivation, and it is so often misused, its impact
is quite frequently highly negative, so that this style has to
be used carefully too.
Definitively, leadership is a primary issue in diverse project

management perspectives:
◾◾ “Project manager is both a leader and a manager of

project activities” (The International Organization for
Standardization, 2012).
◾◾ “Leadership skills involve the ability to guide, motivate,

and direct a team. These skills may include demonstrating
essential capabilities such as negotiation, resilience, com-
munication, problem solving, critical thinking, and inter-
personal skills” (Project Management Institute, 2017).
◾◾ Leadership is a primary “competence element” of the
“competence Area” people, and it “means providing direc-
tion and guidance to individuals and groups. It involves
the ability to choose and apply appropriate styles of
management in different situations” (International Project
Management Association, 2015).
◾◾ “Project management effectiveness depends upon the
project manager’s authority, capability, knowledge, and
leadership skills” (Archibald and Archibald, 2016).
◾◾ “Today, with Project Management 2.0, project managers
are being asked to function as managers of organizational
change on selected projects. This approach is now being
called transformational project management leadership”
(Kerzner, 2015).
◾◾ “The trend is moving toward widespread project man-
agement where the project leadership is shared among
the entire project team” (Sampietro and Villa, 2014).
Repositioning leadership and followership (Dalcher, 2018)
becomes very important: “project followership means
proactive participation in all managerial aspects of the
project work within an individual’s visibility horizon”
(Sampietro and Villa, 2014).
The project team members are actually the key stakeholders

who are essential to have things properly done, and to address,
and then to achieve, both project objectives and other stake-
holders’ satisfaction. Therefore, the importance of the team in
the projects is nowadays continuously increasing, and man-
aging properly the team dynamics became essential. In fact, a
team is not only composed by living beings, but it is a liv-
ing entity itself, with its own specific life cycle, and its own
Figure 7.2 The basic stages of every team life cycle.
organizational behavior. In each project, as in each organi-

zation, the results of a team should be major than the as-is
sum of the results of all its member, and, then, a positive and
effective integration of all the contributions to be made by the
project manager becomes a success factor; in fact, team build-
ing encourages the team members to cooperate effectively,
and it requires a careful attention to team’s life cycle.
In order to facilitate teambuilding, it is essential to be
aware that, in every team life cycle, there are five basic stages
(Tuckman, 1965), each one of which is peculiar with respect to
other (see Figure 7.2):
◾◾ forming;
◾◾ storming;
◾◾ norming;
◾◾ performing; and
◾◾ adjourning.
Basically, project manager should support adequately the team

in all of its life cycle in order to have the team performing
effectively as soon as possible, since, in any case, this condi-
tion must start before the completion of planning processes;
in order to do this, taking into account the specific charac-
teristics of each stage, project manager uses several different
leadership styles, as appropriate. In the stage of forming, team
members start to know each other with respect to the project,
and to put their different emotions, mental models, and visions
in the project itself, with a consequent risk of generating
divergent paths. In this stage, a leadership commanding style
is appropriate to get that initial trust that is needed to proceed,
and to start to share both a unique project vision and common

project objectives to be achieved. In the stage of storming,
team member compete, sometimes intensively, to gain each
one a specific role in the project that can be acknowledged
by all the others, and, if they do not satisfy their expectations,
they resist to project progress. In this case, leadership style
of coaching is most appropriate to get out from this phase as
soon as possible, and, anyway, before the completion of plan-
ning group of processes. In the stage of norming, people build
their shared visions, specify common behaviors and “rules of
engagement”, and a visionary leadership style may be most
appropriate to facilitate the process. In the stage of performing,
which is finally the one that characterizes the effective coop-
eration, an affiliative, delegating, leadership style may be
most effective. This style may probably be the best also in the
adjourning stage, which is the one that will lead to the dis-
solution of the team. Before reaching the adjourning stage, it
is extremely important that project manager obtains from all
other managers involved the proper assurances about the “day
after” the project completion and the professional future of
all the team members; otherwise, there will be a high risk of
project consistent delays.
In project management, teamwork is the most evident
demonstration of stakeholders’ power, since effective coopera-
tion may greatly improve productivity up to levels that are still
partially unknown. In the projects, the process of integration,
which is basically the same that leads to the organizations’ birth,
is quite well known: the results of the teams may be, and so
are expected, greater than the sum of the individual contribu-
tions, due to their integration, which is mainly a project man-
ager’s task. In addition, project management tends to increase
also the individual productivity by enhancing the concept
of responsibility. Team members are transparently charged
with the responsibility of work packages, and this happens not
necessarily because of their belonging to an organizational
structure, but on the basis of a shared decision process that is
based on both individual competence and common effective-

ness recognition, and that is also made known and official to
the other stakeholders. The above-mentioned process guaran-
tees an improvement of both self and social awareness and,
therefore, it enhances motivation, and it leads to better both
individual and collective results; moreover, maybe it is not a
coincidence that the community of project managers identi-
fies, in its perspective, the responsibility as a major ethical topic
(Project Management Institute, 2006).
Chapter 8
Ethics in Stakeholder
Relations
Ethics are specifically integrated in each project, and are essen-

tial both in project management and for project managers;
indeed, codes of ethics and of professional conduct always
characterized project management and project managers’
communities, so that their guidelines, and also their peculiar
nuances, can address both the importance and the effective-
ness of ethical issues in stakeholder relations.
Main values that support Project Management Institute
(PMI’s) Code of Ethics and of Professional Conduct (Project
Management Institute, 2006) are responsibility, respect, fair-
ness, and honesty. Responsibility is defined as “our duty to
take ownership for the decisions we make or fail to make,
the actions we take or fail to take, and the consequences that
result”; its mandatory standards include both being informed
and informing about, upholding the applicable laws, regu-
lations, policies, and rules, and reporting eventual illegal
or unethical conduct. In addition, responsibility’s aspira-
tional standards include decision-making and action-taking,
which are based on the best interest of “wider stakeholders”
as the environment, the public health, and the society in
97
all respects, and include also the acceptance of only those

assignments that are relevant to really owned qualifications,
competence, and skills. Respect is defined as “our duty to
show a high regard for ourselves, others, and the resources
entrusted to us. Resources entrusted to us may include peo-
ple, money, reputation, the safety of others, and natural or
environmental resources”; its mandatory standards include
negotiations in good faith, non-abusive actions versus others,
refraining of exercising inappropriate decisions and/or actions
that are directed toward personal benefits, and the respect of
all kinds of property rights. In addition, respect’s aspirational
standards include information about others’ norms and cus-
toms and consequent appropriate behavior, listening to others
and trying to understand them, direct approaching of people
there is a conflict and/or misunderstanding with, and profes-
sional conduct—in all cases, i.e., versus negative stakeholders
too. Fairness is defined as “our duty to make decisions and
act impartially and objectively. Our conduct must be free from
competing self-interest, prejudice, and favoritism”; its manda-
tory standards include both information and management,
as appropriate, of existing and/or potential conflict of inter-
est situations, while fairness’ aspirational standards include
transparency, impartiality, objectivity, and behavioral equity.
Finally, honesty is defined as “our duty to understand the
truth and act in a truthful manner both in our communica-
tions and in our conduct”; its mandatory standards involve not
engaging in dishonest behaviors intending to get a personal
gain at others’ expenses, and, in addition, condoning and/
or not engaging behaviors that are thought to damage others.
In addition, honesty’s aspirational standards include earnestly
seeking to find out the truth, truthfulness in conduct and/
or communication, creation of relationships that not only
encourage truth, but also timely and accurate information,
and good faith.
IPMA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (International
Project Management Association, 2015) addresses the core values
Ethics in Stakeholder Relations ◾ 99
such as integrity, accountability, and transparency. It may be

interesting to notice that, according to the Code, the commit-
ment to acting ethically both leads to better projects, programs,
and portfolios, and serves to proceed with the profession, and
to promote it. In other words, while it is evident that ethics are
based on values, the principle that has also to be clearly stated
is that ethics add value to the projects. Moreover, the project
management community has to welcome the variety and the
sensitiveness of different political, cultural, and moral con-
texts and/or challenges, and it has also to acknowledge that
stakeholder relationships “depend upon trust, mutual respect
and the appreciation of our diversity”. Specific commitments
to “Project Owners and Stakeholders” include the respect of
confidentiality, the attention to others’ interests, staying on
guard against any biases and unethical influences, taking
precautions to self-protection, the timely communication, the
encouragement to critically reflect on their expectations and
the ethical implications of the project outcome. In addition,
specific commitments to “Co-workers and Employees” include
the attention to the fairness of recruitments, to the highest
level of health and safety measures, to reasonable privacy and
personal hygiene facilities, to cultural sensitiveness, to the
right salaries, to freedom about associating, and the refusal of
any form of eventual unsustainable overwork and/or harmful
working conditions, of forced or bonded labor, of mental or
physical punishment, including any kind of harassment or bul-
lying, of sexual harassment, and of discrimination on the basis
of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age or on any
other arbitrary grounds. Finally, it should be noticed that ethics
are addressed also with reference to the responsibility toward
the wider society, the sustainability and the attention to natural
environment, and the awareness of consequent educational
mission.
In the United Kingdom, APM Code of Professional
Conduct (Association for Project management, 2019) reports
both Standards of Professional Conduct and Standards
for Ethical Conduct, and both personal responsibilities

and responsibility to the profession and to the Association.
Standards of Professional Conduct includes the practice of
own competence in accordance with professional standards
and qualifications, an honest, integer and probe behavior in
relation with other professionals and/or non-professionals
and/or the wider public, the attention to safety, public health,
and the environment, the knowledge about relevant legisla-
tion, regulations and standards, and the relevant compliance
with the consequent requirements. The professional ethical
behavior is considered in accordance with Standards for
Ethical Conduct if it includes the capability of “doing things
right”, and in compliance with the norms of ethical behavior
and public interest. Personal responsibilities include acting
honestly, respecting confidentiality, acting in the best inter-
ests of employees and clients, taking into account the wider
public interests, ensuring that professional skills are kept
up-to-date, claiming expertise only in those areas where it
is actually present, properly informing about eventual con-
flicts of interests and, in case, managing them correctly, not
giving and or accepting valuable gifts or undue payments,
being accurate in reporting, and realistic in forecasting,
being responsible, and acting with due skill, care and dili-
gence. Responsibility to the profession and to the Association
includes self-conduction to uphold and enhance the standing
and reputation of the profession, behaviors that may enhance
the reputation and credibility of self and/or the employer
and/or the profession, non-existence of any kind of discrimi-
nation, and encouraging and/or assisting the professional
development of staff and colleagues.
In Australia, the AIPM’s Code of Ethics & Professional
Conduct (Australian Institute of Project Management, 2018)
focuses on ethical principles of acting with integrity, by being
honest and trustworthy, by demonstrating respect for others,
and by acting with a clear conscience, of practicing competently,
Ethics in Stakeholder Relations ◾ 101
by maintaining and/or developing knowledge and skills, and by

acting on the basis of adequate competency, of demonstrating
leadership, by upholding the reputation of the profession, and
of acting with responsibility, by engaging responsibly with the
community, by fostering health, safety, and well-being, and by
balancing needs of the present with the needs of the future.
In Italy, ISIPM’s Deontological Code (Istituto Italiano di
Project Management, 2019) focuses on nine main ethical
issues, which include the respect of the laws and of the con-
stitutional principles of the Italian State, of the European
Commission regulations, of the ethics, and, in the case in
which activities are developed in foreign countries, also in the
respect of regulation in the country of destination; the commit-
ment to respect, and to promote the respect of, the Code, with
the purpose of taking care of both the Association and the pro-
fessional activity; the update and the upgrade of professional
competencies, also in order to satisfy stakeholder needs; the
development of stakeholder relations that has to be respectful,
loyal, transparent, and fair as much as possible; the acknowl-
edgment and the respect of both intellectual and industrial
property; the development of stakeholder relations that have to
be based on trust, and on the respect of confidentiality; accept-
ing and honoring both responsibilities and commitments; giv-
ing adequate information to interested parties about eventual
conflicts of interests; respecting regulations, and feeling com-
mitted for preservation, relevant to safety, health, environment,
ecological balance, and cultural, historical, and landscape
heritage.
Definitively, all ethics are relevant to stakeholder relations,
and, although they introduce constraints in the projects, at the
same time, since they act also as a lever that moves stakeholder
satisfaction, they empower project, programme, and portfo-
lio results. In particular, ten guiding ethical principles can be
synthetized and suggested for application (Pells, 2015): care
for stakeholders as people, minimize harm to the planet, be
honest—speak and act honestly at all times, commit to profes-

sional standards of behavior, obey the laws, avoid conflicts of
interest, assume responsibility, do a good job, commit to con-
tinuous learning, growth and maturity, and, last but not least,
create value for stakeholders. Indeed, ethics, and stakeholder
relations, have an indissoluble link with project value.
THE II
RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT
PROJECT
Chapter 9
Stakeholder Relations
and Delivered Value:
An Indissoluble Link
The indissoluble link between stakeholder relations and value

actually exists because all types of value are both enabled and
generated by the relations among stakeholders. Indeed, starting
from the early beginning:
◾◾ investment value is agreed before the start of the proj-

ect, it develops during project life cycle, and it will
generally cease as a capital investment at project com-
pletion, to continue as an operation and management
(O&M) investment in product/service/infrastructure life
cycle;
◾◾ project value develops during project life cycle, to be
delivered, and then exchanged, at project completion;
and
◾◾ business and/or social value, on turn, will be originated,
developed, and then be exchanged in product and/or ser-
vice and/or infrastructure life cycle, i.e., when project has
already been completed.
105
In fact, our approach to projects should always take into due

consideration that stakeholder relations are, primarily, genera-
tors of value to be exchanged among stakeholders themselves,
and not only an issue with an inherent complexity to be solved
via stakeholder relations management. We can summarize
above-mentioned concept with the phrase “no stakeholder
relations, no value”. That is why stakeholder perspective is
essential; all types of values that are anyway generated, and
which flow through the project, just like the project results them-
selves, are nothing but the results of relations among stakehold-
ers, who integrate available material and immaterial resources
to release consistent deliverables.
Although, unfortunately, the attention in project manage-
ment, quite often, is more or less focused on project value
as if it is purely generated by project team, with a linearized
approach that starts from “objective” project requirements and
constraints to lead to “objective” deliverables—maybe it is not
a coincidence, as we will see in depth in the following chapters,
that almost 30% of the projects do not meet the initial busi-
ness intents they were originated for (Project Management
Institute, 2018), actual situation is different. The process of
value generation is not linear, but complex, as everything is
in nature, and it involves, either directly or indirectly, all proj-
ect stakeholders, who influence both value creation and value
exchange by interacting via their relations (see Figure 9.1).
In fact, starting from strategies phase, different stakeholder
communities are present at the same time, although they may
not initially interact. Investors plan investments on projects that
could be profitable, customers plan to invest in projects that
could support their own business, influencers monitor the
situation in accordance with their own mission, and, in gen-
eral, every stakeholder community plans to develop value in
accordance with its own strategy. If different investors’ and
customers’ expectations meet each other in a mutually conve-
nient way, a contract or similar is signed, and a new project
starts to live; although there is for sure, at least in this phase,
Stakeholder Relations and Delivered Value ◾ 107
Figure 9.1 A value chain of project investment life cycle.
an agreement about project scope, requirements, cost, time, and

objectives, each community of stakeholders maintains rigidly
its individuality. Indeed, while for the investors the project is
the mean that is supposed to satisfy their expectations in terms
of profitability and/or of social services to be delivered, for the
customers the project is supposed to satisfy their expectations in
terms of support to their core business, which will be operat-
ing just in the product and/or service and/or infrastructure life
cycle that will follow the project life cycle.
In project life cycle, Investors and Customers communi-
ties invest value in the form of resources, each one for its part,
while Providers community, and especially project team, trans-
forms these resources in project value, and Influencers commu-
nity gives its contribution to the picture on the basis of its own
perceived value, by adding constraints and/or trying to influ-
ence the project value. In this way, there is a continuous flow
and exchange of value up to the moment in which project is
completed, and delivered value is definitively released, and
transferred, to customer community.
At this point, and from now on, in the product/service/
infrastructure life cycle, the customer community, while
continuing to invest in the form of production and/or deliv-

ery and/or operations and maintenance resources, becomes
the central actor for delivering value to the users in the form
of products and/or services. At the same time, Investors com-
munity is supposed to receive value back from its investments,
while users community exchange value in the form of resources
versus products and/or services, and Influencers community
gives its contribution to the picture, in this phase too, still on the
basis of its own perceived value, by adding constraints and/or
trying to influence the product and/or service value. In other
words, when passing from project life cycle to product/service/
infrastructure life cycle, there is not only, as it was in project
life cycle, an exchange of value, but, through and through, a
transfer of value too. This transfer of value does not imply a
transfer of property only, but it causes a transfer of role, since
the community of stakeholders that was a customer community
in project life cycle becomes a doers community in product/
service/infrastructure life cycle, then starting to delivery prod-
ucts and/or services to its own users, and it is only beginning
from this phase that we can measure effectively if original proj-
ect goals and business intents are actually realized.
Indeed, the indissoluble link between stakeholder relations
and value arises from different perspectives of observation,
which can be synthetized in the following three principles:
◾◾ stakeholder relations are themselves a value;

◾◾ stakeholder relations generate value;
◾◾ stakeholder relations are the mean to exchange value.
In fact, each contract or similar that is preliminary to each

project, is actually the result of a positive negotiation among
diverse communities of stakeholders, and it harmonizes their
different expectations in mutually agreed scope, time, cost, and
quality; accordingly, stakeholder relations generate a recipro-
cated commitment in terms of value to be invested, which con-
stitutes the “initial capital” of the project, and, then, they are
themselves a value, which existence and definition are neces-

sarily prior to the correspondent project’s ones. Therefore, first
principle may be summarized in “no stakeholder relations, no
projects”. It is generally more evident that, in project life cycle,
stakeholder relations generate a value, which is incorporated
in the project itself; maybe it is less evident that generated
value is the outcome of a flow of both material and immaterial
value, which continuously interact and influence each other,
as we will see in the following. Therefore, second principle
may be summarized in “no stakeholder relations, no generated
value”. Finally, for sure, stakeholder relations are foundational
and unique, to make concrete the exchange of value among
the diverse stakeholder communities; therefore, third principle
may be summarized in “no stakeholder relations, no delivered
value”. Accordingly, definitively, if we focus on the project life
cycle, the results of each project are nothing but the results of
the relations among its stakeholders.
Indeed, in each project, initial value evolves toward deliv-
ered value through a non-linear path, in which diverse, but
contiguous, value domains, interact and integrate, in both
their positive and negative components, via stakeholder rela-
tions; these value domains include both tangible and intan-
gible components, which are, on turn, both visible and hidden,
and which, then, can be represented with an “Iceberg Model”
(Pirozzi, 2017). Basically, we can identify three main domains:
◾◾ the generated value, which corresponds to the deliverables,

and which tends toward being visible;
◾◾ the perceived value, which corresponds to stakeholder sat-
isfaction, and which tends toward being hidden;
◾◾ the value of changes, which corresponds to project risks
and changes to the project, and which tends toward being
partially both visible and hidden.
During project life cycle, these three domains of value, and of

correspondent results, evolve incorporating added value, and
continuously both interact with each other, and affect each

other, and are affected by each other, and this value stream
results, at the completion of the project, in the release of project
delivered value (see Figure 9.2).
The deliverables are the foundations of building project
success, their purpose is achieving project objectives and, then,
they are necessary but not sufficient to the achievements of
project goals, which require stakeholder satisfaction; they are
visible, and directly related with generated value. The devel-
opment of the deliverables is based on project requirements,
which project managers’ community tends to consider as they
are “objective” (although, since they are the result of a media-
tion among diverse “subjective” stakeholder expectation, they
are not, as already mentioned in previous chapters and as
it will be better detailed in the following), and it is driven
by written rules and/or specifications, including contracts,
Statements of Work, technical specifications and/or require-
ments, constraints, standards, and organizational structures.
In any case, the deliverables are objectively measured in terms
of consistency and/or quality, cost, and timing, and, then, they
are oriented mainly to efficiency; project information is mainly
required.
The stakeholder satisfaction is based on stakeholder expec-
tations, it requires the existence of proper deliverables, but its
purpose is achieving those project goals that have been the jus-
tification of mutual investments, and, therefore, as we will fur-
ther in following chapters, it turns out to be the critical success
factor in all projects. Stakeholder satisfaction is mostly hidden,
and/or tends to be hidden, and it is directly related with per-
ceived value. Moreover, stakeholder satisfaction is a subjective
issue that is generally subjectively measured, but it is absolutely
oriented to efficacy; it is also behavior-driven, and, since it is
based on relations, it requires interactive communications.
Finally, on the “waterline”, there are those risks (includ-
ing of course both the opportunities and the threats) and those
changes, which are both based on events, and which may
Figure 9.2 The Value Iceberg Model.
significantly influence and/or have impact on both deliver-

ables and the stakeholder satisfaction. Generally, risks and
changes have to be measured both objectively and subjectively,
they are oriented to both efficacy and efficiency, they are both
rules-driven and behavior-driven, and they require both proj-
ect information exchange and the development of interactive
communication.
Definitively, due to this indissoluble link between stakeholder
relations and project delivered value, satisfying both stake-
holder requirements and stakeholder expectations becomes
critical for achieving project success.
Chapter 10
Satisfying Stakeholder
Requirements and
Expectations: The
Critical Success Factor
If we consider present international and national standards for

project management, may be one of the most updated defini-
tions of project management is “the application of knowledge,
skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the
project requirements”, together with “effective project manage-
ment helps individuals, groups, and public and private organi-
zations to meet business objectives (and to) satisfy stakeholder
expectations” (Project Management Institute, 2017). In general,
although undoubtedly the attention to stakeholders, and specifi-
cally to stakeholder expectations, increased significantly in last
years, the dichotomy between requirements and expectations
led, and still leads, to harmful misunderstandings, and, more-
over, it is clearly, as we will see further in this chapter, a basic
cause for projects lacks of success and/or failures.
In fact, possible misunderstandings are due to the
fact that, while we consider natural and/or normal that
113
stakeholders have one-sided behaviors in accordance with

the diversity of their interests, we tend to consider the proj-
ects as if they are neutral; in other words, while we feel
uncomfortable when dealing with stakeholder expectations,
because they are subjective, we feel more comfortable when
dealing with project requirements, which we tend to consider
as objective … although they are intrinsically not. Actually,
project requirements are nothing but stakeholder require-
ments, and, moreover, requirements are the result of a com-
plex, non-linear, and affected by semantic noise mediation
among diverse subjective expectations, which, although it has
been initially somehow agreed when stakeholders signed the
contract, can be evidently interpreted differently by differ-
ent “stakeholders at stake”. Furthermore, requirements have
a dynamic nature too, and this can be either positive and/
or neutral for the project, if they are managed accurately
and properly during all project life cycle, or negative, if they
diverge from what it has been “apparently” agreed before so
that, in most of these cases “scope creeps” phenomena arise,
or, definitively, as it happens quite often, a combination of
positivity and negativity.
In fact, as previously mentioned, organizations define
strategies, which are based on their own mission and vision,
then select opportunities in accordance with defined strategy,
then set business cases up, and, finally, start projects up. The
inputs of a project, and, specifically, to the project manage-
ment Initiating process group, include business case, contract,
and Statement of Work (The International Organization for
Standardization, 2012); generally, of course, there are differ-
ent business cases for different stakeholders, as, for instance,
providers and customers are. While the business cases, which
are the originators of project start-ups, are based on stake-
holder business expectations, whose satisfaction corresponds
to the achievement of project goals, both the contract and the
Statement of Work, which are the references for project devel-
opment and delivery, are based on stakeholder requirements,
Satisfying Stakeholder Requirements and Expectations ◾ 115
which are, in turn, the conversion of different stakeholder

expectations in a commonly agreed (at least initially) project
scope, and fulfillment of which corresponds to the achieve-
ment of project objectives.
Does this conversion from stakeholder expectations to
project/stakeholder requirements work effectively? Moreover,
can the satisfaction of project requirements be considered an
outcome that is sufficient to ensure the project success? The
actual information that is available from the field (Project
Management Institute, 2018) absolutely confirms the answer
“no, not at all”, although the benefits due to an increasing
Project Management Maturity in the Organizations are evi-
dent. In fact, on average:
◾◾ more than 30% of projects do not successfully meet those

original goals and business intents on which their exis-
tence itself is based on, i.e., they do not satisfy stakeholder
expectations;
◾◾ more than 50% of projects experience scope creep or
uncontrolled changes to the project’s scope, i.e., they do not
satisfy original project requirements, which tend to grow
abnormally during project life cycle;
◾◾ almost 50% of projects do not finish within their initially
scheduled times, i.e., they do not satisfy original project
time requirements; and
◾◾ more than 40% of projects do not finish within their initial
budgets, i.e., they do not still satisfy original project cost
requirements.
Above-mentioned evidence of projects’ not-so-brilliant per-

formances—can we imagine what it would happen if going
to a potential investor and asking him to fund a project
while showing average performances like above?—lead us to
an important principle: stakeholder perspective is a definite
driver for project success, and, even if it includes the subjec-
tivity of relations, it is more reliable, and controllable, than
traditional stand-alone project requirements perspective,

which, in any case, is objective only apparently, since require-
ments are a mediation of different subjective stakeholder
expectations.
Indeed, a project is really successful when its results, in
terms of delivered value, do not only achieve those project
objectives that traditionally correspond to the fulfillment
of project requirements, but are also perceived as they will
achieve those project goals, which correspond to the satisfac-
tion of stakeholder expectations; perception becomes a basic
driver during project life cycle, because project’s perfor-
mances could be evidently measured only after project com-
pletion, i.e., during following product/service/infrastructure
life cycle, and, then, subjectivity of stakeholder relations
takes, through and through, that central role, which is cru-
cial for driving stakeholder satisfaction. In fact, depending
on the complexity of the projects, the gap between the gener-
ated value in terms of deliverables, and the perceived value in
terms of satisfaction, may become significant, as we will see
in next chapter.
In the stakeholder perspective, starting from the invested
value in terms of resources, stakeholder relations both gener-
ate a value in terms of deliverables, and determine a perceived
value in terms of satisfaction. Indeed, a rational domain of
requirements, which is oriented to efficiency and targets proj-
ect objectives, interacts with a relational domain of expecta-
tions, which is oriented to efficacy and targets project goals:
each of the two domains both influences and supports the
other, and a stream of project value is created to be delivered at
project completion (see Figure 10.1).
Definitively, effective stakeholder management should tar-
get both the fulfillment of project/stakeholder requirements and
the satisfaction of stakeholder expectations, which correspond
to both the achievement of project objectives and the percep-
tion that project goals will be achieved: stakeholder satisfaction,
instead of being “a” critical success factor, proves then to be
Satisfying Stakeholder Requirements and Expectations ◾ 117
Figure 10.1 The stakeholder perspective.
“the” critical success factor; in fact, projects may not succeed

their goals, or may fail at all, for various reasons, which could
be technically very different, but, for sure, each project that
was not successful had at least one key stakeholder whose
expectations were not satisfied (Pirozzi, 2017).
Chapter 11
Facing Successfully
Different Levels
of Project Complexity
Each project is characterized by an inherent degree of multi-

level complexity; this is mainly because, on the one side, all
projects are unique and unrepeatable, while, on the other
side, all their relations are intrinsically non-linear, and these
attributes are valid not only for the projects themselves as
a whole, but also for their results, deliverables, scope, time,
cost, quality, value, constraints, assumptions, risks, and,
of course, stakeholders. Therefore, the discipline of proj-
ect management arises to be not only useful to meet project
requirements with increasing efficacy and efficiency, but also
foundational to face project complexity, although it seems that
this advantageous aspect is not commonly, and somehow
unexpectedly, highlighted.
Ultimately, project management faces project complexity
both rationally and relationally. The rational approach is the
most well-known and mature part of project management, and
119
it is also its most common understanding; rationally, the com-

plexity of the project is addressed:
◾◾ by providing proper breakdowns that lead to the possibility

of both handling and estimating more easily lower complex-
ity work packages, which will then be integrated bottom-up
to provide appropriate project outcomes and deliverables;
◾◾ by making efficient use of Initiating, Planning, Executing,
Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing process groups,
and this also by making an effective process tailoring, and,
especially, by establishing an appropriate baseline as
reference for project development, and, then, by properly
controlling project’s progress;
◾◾ by developing a specific, and transparent, team-based
project organization, which can greatly increase both effi-
cacy and efficiency, and, at the same time, can drastically
reduce eventual endogenous complexity due to the perma-
nent organizational structure’s constraints and indetermi-
nacies; and
◾◾ by managing risks, and by doing it properly, in order to
taking the uncertainty of the context and/or of the project
environment into account.
Relational issues are of extraordinary importance in facing

project complexity. First aspect to be considered is that stake-
holder relations are themselves characterized by a multilevel
complexity, since, as previously stated:
◾◾ stakeholders are persons, or groups of persons, i.e., com-

plex systems;
◾◾ stakeholders are different, they may speak or understand
different languages, and they have different interests;
◾◾ stakeholders are numerous, and stakeholder relations are
even more numerous;
◾◾ stakeholder relations are context dependent, and they
influence each other;
Facing Successfully Different Levels of Project Complexity ◾ 121
◾◾ all stakeholder relations are important, and, at least, have

to be monitored; and
◾◾ stakeholder relations may be evolutive.
Therefore, since stakeholder relations introduce complexity,

it should be evident, although sometimes it seems that is not,
that this relational complexity could and should be faced, and
possibly solved, relationally only, i.e., through the same rela-
tions that generate the problem: in other words, it is incon-
ceivable that a relational complexity can be solved rationally,
e.g., through a better planning and control. However, it is
basic that stakeholder relations have a primary supportive role,
and not only a role of complexity bringers, and, moreover,
that their positive importance and usefulness is even more than
above and that it is still increasing.
A second relational issue that is of extraordinary impor-
tance in facing complexity is teamwork, since it is not only
the major factor for creating value, but it is also the major
factor of destruction and removal of endogenous complexity,
so generating a huge regaining and/or increase of productiv-
ity in the project. The virtuous circle is due to the emerging
of “warm” individual responsibilities with respect to “cold”
organizational responsibilities, which in project management
takes place in Planning process group, and, specifically, when
assigning transparently, after both work breakdown struc-
ture and project organizational breakdown structure have
been assessed, the responsibilities of different work packages
to diverse team members. From this point on, indeed, proj-
ect team stakeholder relations evolve to efficient professional
relations, since they succeed to overcome the constraints due
to the existence of permanent hierarchical and/or functional
organizational structures, which, being based on func-
tions to be held and/or maintained rather than on objectives
to be achieved, generally introduce endogenous complexity
with those uncertainties about “who is the owner of what”,
and/or “who is doing what” and/or “waiting something from
somebody”, which almost always generate huge loss of time

and cost.
Ultimately, a major relational approach in facing com-
plexity is stakeholder perspective at all: key processes as
development and management of stakeholder relations,
management of stakeholder requirements and expectations,
and stakeholder engagement, can greatly support project
success, and it may be useful, in order to identify properly
the most efficacious actions, to assess the different levels
of complexity that may characterize the diverse projects
(Pirozzi, 2018).
A model which can be very helpful to face complexity,
by supporting effectively decision-making processes, is the
well-known Cynefin Framework, which have been created,
and developed, starting from early 2000s (Snowden, 2010).
Cynefin Framework is properly a sense-making model based
on observation, in which “data precede model”, rather than
a theoretical categorization model, in which “model precedes
data”: it individuates four domains which are characterized
by different levels of complexity, i.e., simple, complicated,
complex, and chaotic. The domains of simple and compli-
cated are regarded as ordered. In the simple domain, cause
and effort relationships exist, are predictable, repeatable,
self-evident, and can be determined in advance. The decision
model is based on the unique best practice, and the most
appropriate action path is sense–categorize–respond; com-
munication is not present, only information is broadcast, and
the network of relations is irrelevant. On the other hand, in
the complicated domain, cause and effort relationships exist,
but are not evident; the right answer requires the use of
analytical methods, and the support of experts. The decision
model is based either on one of the good practices or on a
combination of them, and the most appropriate action path
is sense–analyze–respond; communication is mainly informa-
tive, and the network of relations starts to be important. The
domains of complex and chaotic are regarded as unordered.
In the complex domain, cause and effort relationships are

only obvious in hindsight, i.e., retrospectively, with unpre-
dictable, emergent outcomes. The decision model is based on
an emergent practice, and the most appropriate action path
is probe–sense–respond; communication is mainly interac-
tive, and the network of relations becomes fundamental. On
the other hand, in the chaotic domain, no cause and effort
relationships can be determined, and quick actions that are
finalized to target more stability are necessary. The decision
model is based on a novel practice, and the most appropriate
action path is act–sense–respond; also in this domain, com-
munication is mainly interactive, and the network of relations
is fundamental. Finally, it is very interesting to consider the
peculiar simple/chaotic boundary, since a “shortcut towards
the chaos” may occur in possible dynamics: i.e., if we push to
oversimplify systems, which, in any case, are either compli-
cated or complex, and we try to manage them as if they are
“simple”, domain will change very soon into an unmanage-
able chaos.
Since the operational processes, including projects and
operations, may be seen as the causes, and the generated value
as the effect, Cynefin Framework can be also applied to projects
(see Figure 11.1), and, then, it can help to manage projects in
contexts of different levels of complexity, in which we look for
the causes that could lead to the effects of projects successes,
as well as for the most effective project management actions to
be taken (Pirozzi, 2018).
In the ordered domains, actually, as we could expect, no
project belongs to the Simple domain, which is the domain of
operations. In this domain, the value generation is a conse-
quence of achieving the target of operation objectives: normal
operations management is sufficient, but procedures are essen-
tial, and following procedures is the critical success factor; there
is just one lesson-to-be-learned, which is the unique best prac-
tice to follow. In the complicated domain, we find, here also
as we could expect, complicated projects; support of experts
Figure 11.1 Projects in Cynefin Framework.
is needed, and that is where project managers start to come

in. In this domain, the value generation is a consequence of
achieving the target of project objectives; the discipline of
project management is very important and/or essential, and
fulfilling the project requirements is the critical success factor;
lessons learned about good practices are very useful.
In the unordered domains, we find in complex domain,
as we could expect also in this case, the complex projects,
but also a part of “manageable” emergencies, which
include those events that are substantially unpredictable,
but where it is possible to plan adequate responses, and/or
to manage properly the relevant risks. In this domain, the
value generation is a consequence of achieving the tar-
get of project goals; the discipline of project management
is essential, and satisfying the stakeholder expectations is
the critical success factor; lessons learned are essential to
find out a proper emergent practice. Finally, in the chaotic
domain, there are both the “unmanaged” emergencies and
the crisis. In this domain, the value generation is a con-
sequence of achieving the target of gaining more stabil-
ity; the discipline of project management is essential, and
restoring the previous balance is the critical success factor;
lessons learned are essential also in this domain to find out
a proper novel practice.
It may be interesting to notice that eventual poor manage-
ment of complexity leads to a “counterclockwise” effect that
makes complexity itself worse; poorly managed operations
become complicated projects, poorly managed complicated
projects become complex projects, poorly managed com-
plex projects become emergencies, and poorly managed emer-
gencies become crisis. In addition, if a project is oversimplified
in an operation, the Cynefin’s “shortcut toward the chaos” will
generate very soon a “snowball effect” in the direction of an
unmanageable chaos.
Going back to complicated and project projects, the stake-
holder perspective can help to understand in depth their
differences (Pirozzi, 2018), and also those historical dichotomies

as traditional versus agile, value-driven versus plan-driven,
project management 2.0 versus 1.0, etc. (see Figure 11.2).
In complicated projects, there is a small gap between meet-
ing the requirements and meeting the expectations of stake-
holders, and this happens when:
◾◾ the project is part of the customer’s core business (“supplier

perspective”, as in internal or in outsourcing projects),
and, then, for the customer, the project is the business
goal, and/or project results are product-oriented and/or
tangible (e.g., in some infrastructure projects) and/or, in
any case, stakeholder requirements are either well-defined
(as in traditional contexts) or are evolutionary, but, in
both cases, all stakeholders cooperate effectively (as in
agile contexts);
◾◾ projects are essentially plan-driven;
◾◾ the triple constraints Time-Cost-Quality are dominant; and
◾◾ the relations with stakeholders are important and periodic.
Since, in complicated projects, the domains of the stakeholder

expectations and of the stakeholder requirements substantially
overlap, we can assume that success is based on the fulfillment
of stakeholder requirements, and that, therefore, managing
properly the generated value, whose measures consist, as in
classic project management, in cost, time, earned value, and,
generally, in consistency/progression of the deliverables, is
necessary and sufficient.
On the other hand, in complex projects, there is a significant
gap between meeting the stakeholder requirements and meet-
ing the stakeholder expectations (see Figure 11.2), and this hap-
pens when:
◾◾ the project is a support of the customer’s core business

(“customer perspective”, as in most external projects), and,
then, for the customer, the project is a mean to achieve
Figure 11.2 The stakeholder perspective in complicated and complex projects.
his business goals, and/or the project results are service-

oriented and/or intangible (e.g., in software projects),
and/or stakeholder requirements are not well-defined,
or are evolutionary, but not all stakeholders cooperate
effectively;
◾◾ projects are essentially value-driven;
◾◾ competing constraints are dominant: the importance of
value and reputation is superior to that of the triple con-
straints (Kerzner, 2015); and
◾◾ relationships with stakeholders are primary and can be
continuous, fast, interactive (as in 2.0 world), evolutive
(Kerzner, 2015).
Since, in complex projects, expected project goals can be far

away from required project objectives, the project success is
based on the satisfaction of stakeholder expectations, and,
therefore, managing properly the perceived business value
becomes mandatory. However, successful management of the
business value requires adequate metrics and measures, which
can be used also during project life cycle, and not only after
project completion; proper key performance indicators are then
needed.
Chapter 12
Targeting Both
Project and Business
Value Generation
by Using KPIs
In all projects, which are, in any case, either complicated or

complex, success derives from the capability of satisfying stake-
holders by both generating the required project value and deliv-
ering the expected perceived business value. “Success is not
necessarily achieved by completing the project within time,
cost, and scope. Success is when the planned business value
is achieved within the imposed constraints and assumptions”
(Kerzner and Saladis, 2009). However, managing value requires
adequate metrics and measures (Kerzner, 2017); moreover,
since the expectations of different stakeholder communities are
evidently diverse, the relevant measures and estimates must
include a set of parameters that cover project management,
economic, and business and/or social needs (Pirozzi, 2018),
and, then, cannot be limited to earned value, which is power-
ful and extraordinary, but is unavoidably based on require-
ments only, and not on expectations too.
129
Project/stakeholder requirements, which reflect diverse stake-

holder expectations but do not generally coincide with any of
them, are the basis, during project life cycle, of those measures
of actual cost, and evaluations of the state of progress, which
are traditionally used as indicators to estimate the “present” sit-
uation and the “ future” time and cost of the project completion.
In any case, but especially in the case of complex projects,
metrics and indicators that are based on earned value could
effectively be integrated by other useful project management
indicators that can be objectively measured (Kerzner, 2017).
On the other hand, generated business and/or social value,
which could represent effectively a measure of the satisfaction
of stakeholder expectations, is, in any case, future with respect
to project life cycle, and, unfortunately, can be measured only
after project completion; however, appropriate indicators that
are generally used to objectively measure performance during
product/service life cycle can be very effectively innovatively
used during project life cycle too as subjective measures of
perceived business and/or social value (see Figure 12.1), and,
then, provide a powerful support to either confirm or readdress,
in terms of both deliverables and stakeholder satisfaction, the
action of the project team during the entire project life cycle
(Pirozzi, 2018).
Definitively, during project life cycle, we therefore need
the support of other additional indicators that can represent
effectively both the project value and the business/social
value. Proper KPIs (Parmenter, 2015) are, therefore, very useful
and/or necessary to target the success of both complicated and
complex projects (Pirozzi, 2018). In fact, when managing major
projects, KPIs are, in any case, part of the necessary multidi-
mensional evaluation of project success and value (Archibald
and Archibald, 2016). The same consideration can be applied
in case of managing complex projects, too. Indeed, although
KPIs are fundamental measures of released projects/products/
services, KPI-based measures and estimations can be also
extremely useful to get crucial progress indications about the
Targeting Value Generation by Using KPIs ◾ 131
Figure 12.1 A value chain of whole investment life cycle and relevant project KPIs.
generated value, and to monitor stakeholder expectations, dur-

ing investment, project, and product/service life cycles.
However, project stakeholders are different, have a differ-
ent behavior, which characterize them in communities, and,
then, have different expectations (Pirozzi, 2017); stakeholder
communities, indeed, target different types of value. Providers
(project manager, project team, business partners) target a
technical (delivered) value, which include triple constraints,
project objectives, revenues, while Investors (top management,
shareholders, funders…) target an economic value, which
include costs, revenues, business prospects, and Purchasers
(customers, users) target their business value, including cus-
tomer costs (which, of course, coincide with providers/
investors revenues), project goals, expected benefits achieve-
ment. Specifically, KPIs should address different types of value
to cover both project management, economic, and business
domains.
Project Management KPIs are especially useful to enhance
project control and to maintain and/or modify the proper route
toward deliveries that fulfill stakeholder requirements. They
are very helpful both in complicated and in complex projects.
Main example of these KPIs is Earned Value, which, although
it is almost never defined as a KPI, is used in almost all proj-
ects, and it is often the only KPI which is used in traditional,
classic, or complicated Project Management. Additional KPIs
include, for example (Kerzner, 2017):
◾◾ cost variance;
◾◾ schedule variance;
◾◾ cost performance index;
◾◾ schedule performance index;
◾◾ resource utilization;
◾◾ percent of milestones missed;
◾◾ management support hours as a percent of labor;
◾◾ planning cost as a percentage of labor;
◾◾ percent of assumptions that have changed;
◾◾ percent turnover of key workers;

◾◾ percent of work packages adhering to the schedule and/or
to the budget;
◾◾ number of assigned resources versus planned resources;
◾◾ percent of actual versus planned baselines completed to
date;
◾◾ percent of actual versus planned best practices used;
◾◾ number of critical assumptions made;
◾◾ percent of critical assumptions that have changed;
◾◾ number of cost and/or schedule revisions;
◾◾ number of critical constraints; and,
◾◾ percent of work packages with a critical risk designation.
Economic KPIs are especially useful to improve relations with

top management and funders, and to maintain and/or modify
the proper route toward the satisfaction of their economic and
financial expectations: their use can be very helpful in compli-
cated projects, and it is basic in complex projects. In any case,
since the domain of economic KPIs is very analytical, and very
vast, it is preferable to narrow focus on some selected high-level
indexes. Economic KPIs include, for example (Marr, 2012):
◾◾ Economic and Financial Indicators, as Net Profit, Net Profit

Margin, Gross Profit Margin, Operating Profit Margin,
EBITDA, Revenue Growth Rate, Total Shareholder Return,
Economic Value Added, Return on Investment, Return on
Capital Employed, Return on Assets, Return on Equity,
Debt-to-Equity Ratio, Cash Conversion Cycle, Working
Capital Ratio, Operating Expense Ratio, CAPEX to Sales
Ratio;
◾◾ Marketing Indicators, as Market Growth Rate, Market Share,
Brand Equity, Cost per Lead, Conversion Rate, Search
Engine Rankings and click-through rate, Page Views and
Bounce Rate;
◾◾ Customer Relationship Management Indicators, as Net
Promoter Score, Customer Retention Rate, Customer
Satisfaction Index, Customer Profitability Score, Customer

Lifetime Value, Customer Turnover Rate, Customer
Engagement, Customer Complaints;
◾◾ Human Resource Indicators, as Human Capital Value
Added, Revenue Per Employee, Employee Satisfaction
Index, Employee Engagement Level, Staff Advocacy
Score, Average Employee Tenure, Absenteeism
Bradford Factor, 360-Degree Feedback Score, Salary
Competitiveness Ratio, Time to Hire, Training Return
on Investment; and
◾◾ Sustainability Indicators, as Carbon Footprint, Water
Footprint, Energy Consumption, Saving Levels Due to
Conservation and Improvement Efforts, Supply Chain
Miles, Waste Reduction Rate, Product Recycling Rate.
Ultimately, Business Value KPIs are either common or specific

for each sector of activity. They are especially useful to improve
relations with customers and users, and to maintain and/or
modify the proper route toward the satisfaction of their busi-
ness expectations; their use is foundational in complex projects
(Pirozzi, 2018). The business value KPIs that are common to
the different sectors of activity are of primary importance, since
they include
◾◾ measures and percentages of stakeholder satisfaction (in

terms of both requirements and expectations);
◾◾ measures and percentages of stakeholder positive engage-
ment; and
◾◾ measures of perceived value, as perceived business value,
social value, quality, reputation, business climate, innova-
tion, sustainability.
In addition, there are other business value KPIs, as functional

and/or quantitative measures, and the relevant percentages of
completion/deviation from budget/schedule, which are specific
of each sector of activity; some examples of these KPIs and/or

KPI groups are shown below:
◾◾ Sustainable Smart Cities (International Telecommunication

Union, 2015): indices of ICT, environmental sustainabil-
ity, productivity, quality of life, equity, social inclusion,
physical infrastructure, network, knowledge economy,
education, openness and public participation, governance,
infrastructure connections;
◾◾ Railway Infrastructure (PRIME, 2017): measures of con-
text, safety/security/environment, performance (punctual-
ity & robustness), delivery (capacity & condition), finance
(costs, charging, & revenues), growth (utilization, intermo-
dality, & asset capability/ERTMS);
◾◾ Construction Industry (Glenigan, Constructing Excellence,
CITB, and UK Department for Business, Energy, and
Industrial Strategy, 2018): Economic KPIs (Client
Satisfaction, Contractor Satisfaction, Defects Predictability
Cost, Predictability Time, Profitability, Productivity),
Respect for People KPIs (Staff Turnover, Sickness Absence,
Safety, Working Hours, Qualifications & Skills, Training,
Investors in People, Staff Loss, Make-up of Staff),
Environment KPIs (Energy Use, Mains Water Use, Waste,
Commercial vehicle movements);
◾◾ Local Public Transportation (Trans Cooperative Research
Program, 2003): measures of availability, service delivery,
community, travel time, safety and security, maintenance
and construction, cost, capacity;
◾◾ Pharmaceutical Industry (Roche, 2017): measures relevant
to value for patients, for employees, for partners, for com-
munities, for environment, for investors;
◾◾ Research Infrastructures (ESFRI, 2018): indicators relevant
to scientific excellence outcomes, output and delivery
of talent, reference role in the disciplinary field (unique-
ness in capabilities, in capacity) at International level,
progress in achieving the Research Infrastructures’ mile-

stones along its life cycle, impact, innovation, entrepre-
neurship, establishment and development of the Research
Infrastructures’ user community, scientific data manage-
ment policy, metadata catalogue interfacing, open science
initiatives, advanced data services for scientific analysis
and for innovation developments, enforcement of qual-
ity control of access (peer review), data, and services to
research and innovation;
◾◾ Web Marketing (these KPIs are derived from Google
Analytics Software): measures of audience (number of
sessions, users—both new and returning, page views,
average session duration, bounce rate, new sessions),
location, new versus returning users, browsers and
OS, devices, acquisition (direct traffic, organic search,
referral, social media, display advertising, email, paid
search), source/medium (search engine/domain, organic/
cost-per-click paid search/referral), Ad Works/SEO/Social,
behavior (pages, actions, number of page views, bounce
rate, exit rate, flow), site content/all pages, landing/exit
pages, real-time, in-page analytics;
◾◾ Information Technology (Kerzner, 2017): number of lines of
code, language understandability, information movability/
immovability, software complexity, math/algorithms com-
plexity, input/output understandability, percent of the sys-
tem with latest updates (antivirus and antispyware), mean
time to make system repairs; and
◾◾ Roadway Bridges (European Commission—COST Action
TU1406, 2016): KPIs at Component Level (Substructure,
Superstructure, Road plus Equipment), at System Level
(Technical, Sustainability, Socio Economic), at Network
Level, and correspondence with Maintenance Tasks.
In project management, any measurable value could be effec-

tively used as a KPI, but, if they are too many, the situation
can become unworkable: it is, then, important to make an
appropriate selection. While all KPIs have to be in accordance

with SMART rule (Doran, 1981), i.e., specific, measurable,
attainable, realistic or relevant, time related, project-oriented
KPIs have to be selected also because they have the charac-
teristics of being predictive, measurable, actionable, relevant,
automated, and few in number: moreover, the best way to
share effectively, rapidly, and continuously, KPIs with other
stakeholders is using dashboards and/or scorecards, which
replace very efficiently traditional reports (Kerzner, 2015). As
previously seen, the use of dashboards, in addition, can bring
important benefits in the relations with two specific typolo-
gies of non-positive stakeholders, as reluctant/indifferent
stakeholders, who do not want to be engaged, and negative/
hostile stakeholders, who do not want to agree anything: these
categories are, unfortunately, quite common in the real world,
and especially in complex projects. Actually, the use of KPIs
and dashboards can help to deal effectively also with these
stakeholders, because KPIs that are shared via dashboards
are business-oriented, client-centered, and very stakeholder-
friendly; moreover, they require a quick and minimal effort to
interact, and, in most cases, they are available so frequently for
sharing, that also no-answers can be interpreted positively, as a
silent approval.
In all cases, KPIs are necessary, powerful, and effective
means to manage both delivered and perceived value: proper
KPIs can be, therefore, selected, agreed, measured/estimated,
shared with stakeholders via dashboards, and used to confirm/
readdress, in terms of both deliverables and stakeholder satis-
faction, the action of the project team during the entire project
life cycle (Pirozzi, 2018). In this way, an effective stakeholder
management, which uses properly KPIs and dashboards, can
increase the success rate in a variety of projects with different
size and complexity, by supporting both the value generation,
and the project goals achievement.
Chapter 13
Relationship
Management Project:
A Structured Path
to Effectiveness
Whatever the approach to project management is, Stakeholder

Relationship Management is absolutely cross-discipline; it con-
cerns all relation management issues, and “relationship man-
agement is of special importance in today’s world” (Archibald,
2017), but it has a fundamental indirect influence on delivery
management too, since each project is made by stakehold-
ers to be delivered to other stakeholders. In short, specifically
(Pirozzi, 2018):
◾◾ in complicated projects, Stakeholder Relationship Management

supports the generation of that delivered value, which leads to
project success by achieving project objectives, which, in turn,
fulfill project/stakeholder requirements; therefore, Stakeholder
Relationship Management has to be focused on those stake-
holders who are involved in the implementation of the project,
such as the project team, and its basic guidelines can be the
139
development of awareness, leadership, teaming, motivation,

and ethics (Pirozzi, 2017), to increase deliverable effective-
ness and project efficiency; and
◾◾ in complex projects, in addition to the above, Stakeholder
Relationship Management supports the generation of that
perceived business value, which leads to project success by
achieving those project goals, which, in turn, fulfill stake-
holder expectations; Stakeholder Relationship Management
must, then, be primarily focused also on those stakeholders
who direct the project, such as customers/users, sponsor/top
management, and funders, and its basic guideline is the
development of an effective communication, to add value
to the project and to improve project effectiveness.
Definitively, in all projects, but specifically in complex projects,

the Stakeholder Relationship Management is a powerful, and
effective, set of processes and competencies, that helps both the
project manager and the project team to remain constantly
aligned with both stakeholder requirements and expectations,
in order to target continuously the achievement of both project
objectives and goals, so increasing the overall project success
rate (Pirozzi, 2018). However, in order to improve successfully
both the meeting of the original goals and business intent of
the project, and/or the achievement of objectives in terms of
scope, time, cost, and quality, especially in large and/or com-
plex projects, just an event-driven stakeholder management
cannot be considered as sufficient, and, therefore, a structured
path to effectiveness must be built; every relationship manage-
ment is, indeed, a project in the project, and it has to be man-
aged properly.
Relationship Management Project includes and integrates
several specific enhanced project management processes,
which, in turn, interact with each other perfectly in accordance
with the five project management process groups, i.e., Initiating,
Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing
(see Figure 13.1); in this way, immediate applicability is
Relationship Management Project ◾ 141
Figure 13.1 The Relationship Management Project.
guaranteed and ensured in all complicated and complex proj-

ects, of any size and in any sector of activity.
Relationship Management Project is naturally based on the
axioms that both stakeholder relations management and com-
munications have to be considered in their most comprehen-
sive and extensive meaning, as we saw in previous chapters;
indeed, stakeholder management is not limited to stakeholder
engagement only, because we have to consider that, for
instance, relations that are non-collaborative and/or among
stakeholders, and not just with them, have to be managed
too, as well as project communication is not limited to project
information only, but it must cover all the diverse multilateral
exchange of project-related contents.
Definitively, Relationship Management Project both is based
on and follows the two main guidelines:
◾◾ both stakeholder relations management and communica-

tion management processes must be specifically present in
all the project management process groups; e.g., it is evi-
dently unconceivable to identify a scope or to develop a
project charter without interacting with the project spon-
sor, or to develop project plans without interacting with
those members of the project team that are the respon-
sible of the diverse work packages, or to close a project
without interacting with the customer, etc.; and
◾◾ both the project/stakeholder requirements, the stakeholder
expectations, and the measures of value as the key perfor-
mance indicators (KPIs), have to be processed during the
whole project life cycle, i.e., they have to be determined,
assessed, managed, and control, and all this iteratively
and/or adaptively too, if needed.
In the Initiating process group of the Relationship Management

Project, there are the following processes: manage relations
to initiating, manage communication to initiating, and identify
stakeholders. In this group, peculiarity of both relations and
communication management processes is precisely the complex-

ity of initiating relations, since there is the forming phase of
diverse project stakeholder communities, and there is also the
delicacy due to importance of first impression, which can influ-
ence heavily, both positively and negatively, the continuation
of the diverse stakeholder relationships. The process identify
stakeholders is almost identical to the namesake process that
is present both in ISO 21500:2012 (International Organization
for Standardization, 2012) and in PMBOK Guide, sixth edition
(Project Management Institute, 2017). Main document in output
is the stakeholder register, which is generally incorporated in
the Project Charter.
In the Planning process group of the Relationship Management
Project, there are the following processes: manage relations to
planning, manage communications to planning, analyze stake-
holders, assess requirements, assess expectations, determine
KPIs, plan communications, and plan stakeholder engagement.
In this group, peculiarity of both relations and communica-
tion management processes is the complexity of navigating in
newborn relations with diverse stakeholder community to reach
significant “strategic” goals in terms of both scope, require-
ments, and expectations assessment, and planning accuracy
and/or effectiveness. Analyze stakeholders process enhances
traditional analysis issues through systemic approach, and,
then, becomes foundational to establish the proper “stake-
holder baseline” in terms of requirements, expectations,
and KPIs. The processes of both assessing project/stakeholder
requirements, which include the process collect requirements of
PMBOK Guide, sixth edition (Project Management Institute,
2017), of assessing stakeholder expectations, and of determin-
ing KPIs, are all the results of an in-depth analysis, and in
some cases of a detailed design too, and integrate hypotheses
made by project team with interactive validations to be obtained
through feedbacks originated by diverse stakeholders communi-
ties. Plan communication is almost identical to the namesake
process that is present both in ISO 21500:2012 (International
Organization for Standardization, 2012) and in PMBOK Guide,

sixth edition (Project Management Institute, 2017), while plan
stakeholder engagement is almost identical to the namesake
process that is present in PMBOK Guide, sixth edition (Project
Management Institute, 2017). Main documents in output are
the stakeholder baseline, which include all details in terms of
project/stakeholder requirements, stakeholder expectations, and
value measures as KPIs, the stakeholder engagement plan, and
the communication plan; all these documents may be incorpo-
rated in the project plan.
In the Executing process group of the Relationship
Management Project, there are the following processes: man-
age relations to executing, manage communications to execut-
ing, manage requirements, manage expectations, and manage
KPIs. In this group, peculiarity of both relations and commu-
nication management processes is the needed pragmatism of
finalizing relations with all diverse stakeholder communities to
the concrete effectiveness and efficiency of project deliverables.
Furthermore, management of requirements, expectations, and
KPIs is also finalized to realize, and to measure, those deliv-
erables that are in accordance with various needs. Manage
communications process includes the namesake process that
is present both in ISO 21500:2012 (International Organization
for Standardization, 2012) and in PMBOK Guide, sixth edition
(Project Management Institute, 2017), and manage relations
process includes manage stakeholder engagement process of
PMBOK Guide, sixth edition (Project Management Institute, 2017),
but both processes must be considered as covering the whole
axioms that have been described above. Main document in
output is the lesson learned register that is relevant to stake-
holders and to the relations with them.
In the Monitoring and Controlling process group of the
Relationship Management Project, there are the following
processes: Manage Relations to Monitoring and Controlling,
Manage Communications to Monitoring and Controlling,
Control Requirements, Control Expectations, and Control KPIs.
In this group, peculiarity of both relations and communication

management processes is the delicacy of relations with team
members, since both effectiveness, efficiency, and accuracy of
the control processes need that control itself is always managed,
and perceived, as the result of a joint collaborative action,
and never as a third-party inspecting audit. The processes of
controlling both the requirements, the expectations, and the
KPIs, target the deviations from the “stakeholder baseline”,
and relevant eventual changes to be approved. Manage com-
munication process includes monitor/control communication
process that is present both in ISO 21500:2012 (International
Organization for Standardization, 2012) and in PMBOK Guide,
sixth edition (Project Management Institute, 2017), and man-
age relations process includes monitor stakeholder engagement
process of PMBOK Guide, sixth edition (Project Management
Institute, 2017), but both processes must be considered, in this
process group too, as covering the whole axioms that have
been previously described. Main documents in output are
the progress reports, the corrective actions, and the approved
changes, which are relevant to stakeholders and to the relations
with them.
In the Closing process group of the Relationship Management
Project, there are the following processes: manage relations
to closing, manage communications to closing, and manage
exchange of value. In this group, peculiarity of both relations
and communication management processes is the specific focus
on both acceptance and transfer of delivered value, which
make in this process group the importance of the relationship
so great, that closing may be considered as the real “ultimate
test” of the relationship itself, and, moreover, of the project
as a whole. Indeed, although it seems that in several proj-
ects the closing is considered almost a sort of “automatic” or
“semiautomatic” process group (may be some/several project
failures depend on that, too?), the processes of managing the
exchange of value are extremely tricky, from both the rational
and the relational perspectives; in fact, before the “final” project
decisions are made in terms of acceptance, transfer of property

and/or responsibility, authorizations for payments, winding
up of groups, change of work and/or of duties, etc., all types
of fears and doubts tend to recur in stakeholder communities,
and this must be managed very carefully and very delicately.
Main document in output is the report of the lesson learned
that is relevant to stakeholders and to the relations with them,
which may successively be incorporated in a lessons learned
repository in order to be available to other projects.
Definitively, the Relationship Management Project is a
structured path to effectiveness in increasing the success rate
in all projects, but specifically in complex and/or large projects,
and its usefulness and immediate applicability are proven and
strengthened by its immediate complementarity, and integrabil-
ity, with project management processes, too.
Chapter 14
New Stakeholder-
Centered Trends: Project
Management X.0
“We all live in a world of Project Management 2.0” (Kerzner,

2015). Indeed, interactive Web 2.0 makes powerful tools avail-
able to the community, and, in project management domain,
there is also the possibility for differently located, and even
virtual, project teams, of cooperating effectively via distrib-
uted collaboration; however, Project Management 2.0 is much,
much more than this.
In fact, Project Management 2.0 (Kerzner, 2015) addresses a
2.0 domain of complex projects:
◾◾ in which the stakeholders may be very numerous, and/or

distributed, and/or with diversified interests;
◾◾ success of which depends on generated business value,
and not only on time, cost, and objectives achievements,
since “success is not necessarily achieved by completing
the project within time, cost, and scope. Success is when
the planned business value is achieved within the imposed
constraints and assumptions” (Kerzner and Saladis, 2009);
147
◾◾ where competing constraints as the value, the reputation

and the quality, not only must be added to the constraints
as time, cost, and risks, but become dominant, too;
◾◾ requirements of which, generally, are not well defined, but
are flexible and evolutionary; and
◾◾ in which stakeholder relations are fast, continuous, inter-
active, and evolutive.
Ultimately, Project Management 2.0 is an evolution of Project

Management 1.0 (Kerzner, 2015):
◾◾ which is business value-driven, since the orientation

toward customers requires measures that are focused on
value, and not only on time and cost; relevant key perfor-
mance indicators, which can represent appropriately the
future, to be represented and continuously shared with
project stakeholders via dashboards and/or scorecards,
can be then effectively used;
◾◾ which is flexible, so that also agile approaches may be
useful, and, moreover, it is characterized by participative
and collaborative leadership, high-level project manage-
ment competencies present in all project team, distributed
planning and control, in order to ensure the client-centered-
flexibility that is needed to target project success; and
◾◾ which has at its disposal powerful web-based project man-
agement tools, to be used to enable the distributed collabo-
ration, also with respect to virtual and/or not co-located
teams.
It is very important to notice that, since Project Management

2.0 is focused on business value, it can be applied not only to
operational projects, but to strategic projects too, and this char-
acteristic someway has opened the way to a certain proposal
of Project Management 3.0. In fact, a definition of Project
Management 3.0 is “Project Management 3.0 is business-driven
project management using value creation with a heavy focus
New Stakeholder-Centered Trends: Project Management X.0 ◾ 149
on building a portfolio of projects” (Kerzner, 2019). Some

Project Management 3.0 key issues concern:
◾◾ new increased roles for both project managers and

executives;
◾◾ the entry of the project management in the board room,
also to support strategic planning;
◾◾ the need of intangible measures too, including image/
reputation, collaboration, commitment, customer satis-
faction, stress level, teamwork, employee morale, and
sustainability;
◾◾ the grow in use of dashboards (especially of those that are
internally developed); and
◾◾ the acknowledgment of the importance of both other
values other than economical, e.g., cultural, behavioral,
social, etc., and of soft skills.
Both Stakeholder Perspective and the Relationship Management

Project are evidently applicable to 2.0 projects, which are a part
of complex projects, but they are also in a completely natural
way applicable to the above-defined 3.0 contexts too. In fact,
although in portfolios there are evidently both a greater com-
plexity to be faced, and a larger variety of stakeholder rela-
tionships to be managed—with certain commonalities among
parts of the diverse stakeholders communities, which may be
identified by analyzing the eventual correlations among the
diverse programs, projects, operations and other activities that
are part of the same portfolio, the value chain of the portfolios
(see Figure 14.1) has a structure that is almost identical to the
project value chain (in addition, please consider this issue as a
cue for further discussions about the actual differences among
portfolio, program, and project management). Moreover,
almost all main Project Management 3.0 issues that have
been someway outlined, including the constant orientation
toward business and/or social value, the attention to the coher-
ence between strategies and projects that is represented by
Figure 14.1 A value chain of portfolio investment life cycle.
stakeholder expectations, the use of key performance indica-

tors (KPIs) relevant to both tangible and intangible measures,
the capital importance of soft skills, etc., have been extensively
developed in previous chapters. In additions, metrics that have
been used seem coherent also with recent definitions (Kerzner
and Ward, 2019) of Project Management 4.0’s Intangible
Metrics, and of Project Management 5.0’s Strategic Metrics.
Finally, what could be next? Maybe that, in a near and/
or medium term future, we will have a Web-oriented Project
Management X.0 (see Figure 14.2), which will be applicable
to both project and portfolio management, will further benefit
from Web’s high speed connectivity and distributed software
tools, and which:
◾◾ will import from Web 3.0 technologies and developments

in terms of Web Data and of Semantic Web, in order
both to make available a Global Project Management
Knowledge Base of Lessons Learned and to harmonize
different languages of very diverse stakeholder com-
munities. Indeed, the integration and the availability of
Project Management Knowledge Bases from global and
New Stakeholder-Centered Trends: Project Management X.0 ◾ 151
Figure 14.2 Project Management X.0.
specific high-quality sources, including, for instance, PM

World Journal and PM World Library, International Project
Management Associations as PMI and IPMA, National
Project Management Associations as the British APM
(Association for Project Management), the Australian AIPM
(Australian Institute of Project Management), the Italian
ISIPM (Istituto Italiano di Project Management), etc.,
Universities, Research Centers, Associations that represent
diverse industrial/trade/sectors, other web sources, and so
forth, could hugely enhance awareness, knowledge, and
cooperation in project management community; and
◾◾ will import from diverse dimensions of Web 4.0 (Almeida,
2017), including Web of Things, Symbiotic Web, Web
Social Computing, and Pervasive/Ubiquitous Computing,
those technologies and developments in terms of media
providers, search engines, Internet of Things, Big Data,

Artificial Intelligence, Mobile/Cloud Computing, Augmented
Reality, devices/sensors, which can allow not an enhanced,
effective access to large amount of data from almost
everywhere and from a variety of devices, but also the
use of powerful inference and simulation expert systems
to greatly increase efficacy in decision-making support,
so strengthening effectiveness and efficiency in both cre-
ation of business/social value and risk management.
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Index
Note: Locators in italics represent B

figures.
Behavior, 4, 5, 16, 21, 33–43, 49,
56–57, 58, 60, 63, 69, 70,
A 78, 80, 83, 85, 93, 94, 98,
Accountability, 98–99 100, 102, 110, 114, 132,
Achievement, 4, 88, 110, 114–116, 136, 149
132, 137, 140, 147 Big Data, 151–152
Acquaintances, 35, 36 Body language, communication,
Active listening, 63, 69–70 65, 66
Adjourning stage, team life cycle, Business value, 5, 8, 17, 105, 128,
93, 94 129, 132, 134, 135, 137, 140,
Administrative closure, 22 147, 148
Affiliative leadership style, 89–90
Analysis, 3, 19, 27, 43, 45–49, 63, C
86, 136, 143
Artificial Intelligence, 151–152 Cause/effect relations, 47, 49, 53
Assessment information, 41–42 Channels, communication, 61–65
Association for Project Management Closely, See Manage closely
(APM), 99–100, 151 Closing, process group, 22, 26, 82,
Associations, 11, 14, 15, 34, 41, 67, 140, 145
80, 82, 100, 101, 151 CMC. See Computer Mediated
Attitude, 35, 36 Communication (CMC)
Augmented reality, 151–152 Coaching, leadership style, 89–90
Australian Institute of Project Code of Ethics & Professional
Management (AIPM), Conduct (AIPM), 100
100–101, 151 Code of Ethics and of Professional
Authority, 33, 61, 69, 92 Conduct (PMI), 97
Awareness, 47, 55, 70–72, 86–88, Code of Ethics and Professional
90, 95, 99, 140, 151 Conduct (IPMA), 98
159
160 ◾ Index
Code of Professional Conduct language, 60, 61

(APM), 99 management, 27–28, 55, 143
Coding, communication, 59, media, 62, 66, 67–68
61–62, 68 medium, 60, 67, 68, 75
Commanding, leadership style, 91 monitoring approach, 63
Commitments, 69, 99, 101 neutral, 67, 71
Common domain, communication, noise, 61, 67–68, 80
62–63 nonverbal, 58, 64, 65–66, 70, 71,
Communication, 12–13, 20–24, 27–29, 80, 83, 89
34, 41, 51, 53–72, 73–83, 85, observation, 63, 69, 70
86, 91, 92, 98, 99, 110, 112, open, 62, 71
122, 123, 135, 140–145 oral, 64, 65
active listening, 63, 69–70 organizational filters, 61
body language, 65, 66 paraverbal, 64, 65, 66, 70, 71, 80
channels, 60, 62, 64, 65 perception, 65
coding, 59, 61–62, 68 personal filters, 60
common domain, 62 plan/planning, 20, 22, 143, 144
complementary, 58 plurality of, 74
Computer Mediated project, 142
Communication (CMC), 74, of project manager with
75, 78–80, 82 stakeholders, 12–13
contents, 57, 59, 60, 64, 66, 70, purposeful/purposes, 57, 63,
71, 80 68–69, 81
decoding, 59, 61, 68 receivers, 68, 70, 75
direct, 34, 41, 73, 79, 80, 83 reinforcing loop, 54, 54
effective, 51, 53–54, 54, 57, 60, relationship, 53, 56–58, 60,
62, 64, 65, 70, 75, 83, 140 63–64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 74
environment, 61, 67, 71 risk, 79
five senses, 63–64 symmetric, 58
flow, 60 theory, 58
format, 60, 61 transmitter, 68, 70, 75
frames of reference, 59, 60, 62, 71 variety of, 67
impersonal, 62, 67 verbal, 58, 64, 66, 70, 71, 83
inadequate, 54, 55 virtuous circle, 54, 121
information, 20, 55–56, 60, 62, visual, 64, 67, 83
64, 68, 70 written, 64, 66–67, 80, 83
informative, 60, 62, 67, 83, 122 Community/communities, 5, 6,
interactive, 56–59, 59, 83, 100, 11, 14, 15, 17, 20, 32–42,
110, 112, 123 46, 48, 49, 55, 61, 63, 69,
interactive stakeholder model, 76, 78, 80, 95, 99–101,
58–59, 59, 76 106–110, 129, 132, 135,
interpersonal, 21, 34, 62, 65, 67, 136, 143–146, 147, 149,
68, 73, 79, 80, 83 150, 151
Index ◾ 161
Competencies, 101, 148 Deferred time, 66

effective communication, 83, 91 Delivered value, 109–112, 111, 116,
emotional intelligence groups, 132, 139, 145
86, 87 Democratic leadership style, 89–91
leadership, 89 Deontological Code (ISIPM), 101
personal, 87 Diplomacy, 26
personal mastery, 86
process/processes, 140 E
project manager, 50–51, 55,
82, 83 Economic and financial indicators,
self-control, 91 133, See also Economic KPIs
self-management, 87 Economic KPIs, 133–134
social, 88 Economic value, 132, 133
Computer Mediated Communication Effective communication, 51, 54,
(CMC), 74, 75, 78–80, 82 54, 55, 57, 63, 64, 70, 72,
Consistency, 69, 110, 126 80, 83, 91, 140, See also
Construction industry, 135 Communication
Contents, 17, 42, 57, 59, 60, 61, 64, Effectiveness, 30, 53, 62, 63, 66,
66, 70–75, 81, 142 71, 75, 79, 92, 95, 97, 140,
Context, 20, 29, 30, 32, 34, 50, 56, 143–146, 152
58, 61, 64, 99, 120, 123, Efficacy, 38, 75, 80, 110, 112, 116,
126, 135, 149 119, 120, 152
Controlling/monitoring and Efficiency, 110, 112, 116, 119, 120,
controlling, process group, 140, 144, 145, 152
14, 27, 28, 82, 120, 140, Emotional intelligence, 86–87,
144, 145 87, 89
Corporate social responsibility, 5 Emotional self-awareness, 87
Cost, 106–107, 108, 110, 130 Emotional self-control, 87
Critical success factor (CSF), 110, Empathy, 88
113–117, 123, 125 Environment, 32, 47, 49, 50, 60,
Cube, stakeholders, 35–36, 61, 63, 66, 67, 71, 88, 90,
36, 39 97–101, 120, 135
Customer relationship management analysis, 63
indicators, 133–134, communication, 60, 61, 67, 71
See also Economic KPIs constraints, 47
Cynefin Framework, 122, 123, internal and external, 32, 49,
124, 125 49, 88
natural, 99
D professional, 66
Ethics, 5, 6, 11, 87, 95, 97–102, 140
Dashboards, 67, 71, 74, 83, 137, Executing/implementing, process
148, 149 group, 26, 27, 28, 82, 83,
Decoding, communication, 59, 61, 68 120, 140, 144
162 ◾ Index
F Iceberg Model, 109, 111

Identification information, 41
Facial expressions, 66, See also Impersonal, communication, 56, 62,
Nonverbal communication 67, 74, 75
Failure, 15, 48, 49, 55, 56, 66, 113, 145 Inadequate, communication, 54, 55
Fairness, 97–99 Individual Competence Baseline 4.0
Families, 11, 15, 16 (ICB 4.0), 28–29
Feedback(s), 56, 62–64, 67, 75, Individual learning path, 85
134, 143 Influence, 4, 8, 9, 13, 16, 21–29,
Feedforward messages, 62 31–42, 47, 50, 51, 57, 60,
Fifth discipline, 86 63, 69, 73, 76, 78, 81, 82,
Five senses, communication, 63–64 99, 106–109, 112, 116, 120,
Flow of communication, 60 139, 143
Followership, 92 Influence, leadership, 88–89
Format of communication, 60, 61 Influence/impact grid, 33
Forming stage, team life cycle, 93–94 Influencers, 39, 41, 47, 47–48, 50, 80
Frames of reference, communication, Information, 13, 15, 20–29, 31, 41,
59, 60, 61, 62, 71 43, 46, 55–57, 60, 62, 64,
Friends, 11, 15, 16, 35, 36 67, 68, 70, 74–81, 83, 89, 90,
98, 101, 110, 112, 115, 122,
G 136, 142
Information technology, 136
Gesture, 66, See also Nonverbal Informative, communication, 60, 62,
communication 67, 83, 122
Goals, 5–8, 23, 24, 40, 41, 46, 49, 50, Initiating, process group, 20, 23–27,
71, 90, 91, 108, 110, 114–117, 42, 70, 79, 82, 83, 114, 120,
125, 128, 132, 137, 140, 143 140, 142, 143
Initiative, 88, 91, 136
H Innovative use, of product/service
life cycle, 130
Hard skills, 30, 55, 61 Intelligence. See Emotional
Honesty, 98 intelligence
Hostile stakeholders, 5, 11, 15–16, Interactive, communication, 50,
41, 83, 137, See also 56–59, 59, 64, 73–76, 78,
Stakeholders 81, 83, 100, 110, 112, 123,
Human resource indicators, 134, 128, 147, 148
See also Economic KPIs Interactive stakeholder
Hypercube, stakeholders, 39, 40 communication model,
58–59, 59, 76
I Interest, 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 15, 20–29,
31–42, 34, 42, 46, 70, 72,
ICB 4.0. See Individual Competence 85, 97–102, 114, 120,
Baseline 4.0 (ICB 4.0) 123, 125
Index ◾ 163
Internal and external environment, L

32, 49, 49, 88
Internal stakeholders, 4, See also Language, 32, 39–41, 58, 60, 61, 65,
Stakeholders 66, 70, 71, 72, 76, 79, 80,
International Project Management 82, 89, 136
Association (IPMA), 28, Leadership, 11, 29, 61, 83, 85–94,
98, 151 101, 140, 148
International Project Management emotional intelligence, 86–87,
Associations, 82, 151 87, 89
International Standard, 24 influence, 88–89
Internet of Things, 151–152 relationship management, 86,
Interpersonal communication, 87, 88
21, 34, 53, 62, 65, 67, 68, resonant, 86, 89
73, 74, 79, 80, 81, 82, self-awareness, 86–87, 87, 90, 95
83, 89 self-management, 87, 87–88
Interpersonal skills, 70–72, 83, skills, 92
85–95 social awareness, 86, 87, 88, 95
Intonation, 65 styles, 89–91, 93, See also specific
Investment life cycle, 6, 7, 105, leadership style
107–108, 107 Lessons learned, 76, 81, 125, 144,
Investors, 39, 40–41, 47, 146, 150
47–48, 50 Life cycle
Irritants, 35, 36 investment, 7, 47, 47, 83, 105,
ISO 21500, 24, 25, 26, 28, 143, 107, 107–108, 131, 150
144, 145 product/service, 7, 83, 105,
Istituto Italiano di Project 107–108, 116
Management (ISIPM), project, 7, 27, 28, 31–32, 35, 37,
101, 151 38, 42, 49, 62, 105, 108,
107, 109–110, 116, 128, 130
team, 92–93, 93
K
Liking, 69
Key performance indicators (KPIs), Local public transportation, 135
83, 128, 130–137, 131, Lovers, 11, 15, 16
142–145, 148, 150
business value, 129–137 M
economic, 129, 133–135
perceived value, 134, 137 Manage closely, 34, 35, 53, 73
project management, 129, 130, Manage stakeholder engagement,
131, 132–133, 136–137 27–29, 144
Knowledge Marketing indicators, 133,
knowledge area, 20, 22, 24, 27, See also Economic KPIs;
55, 75 Key performance indicators
knowledge base, 81, 150 (KPIs)
164 ◾ Index
Media, 11, 14, 15, 20, 41, 61, 62, Open communication, 62, 71, 79
66, 67–68, 76, 78, 80, 82, Open mind, 71
151–152 Optimism, 88
Mediation, 21, 48, 74, 110, 114, 116 Oral communication, 64, 65, See also
Medium, communication, 60, 67, 68, Verbal communication
75, 136 Organizational awareness, 88
Messages, 57, 60, 61–62, 65–67 Organizational behaviour, 83, 85, 93
Metacommunication, 57, See also Organizational filters,
Communication communication, 61
Metadata, 136 Organizational performance, 4
Metamessages, 62
Mind map of ISO 21500 project P
management processes, 25
Mobile/cloud computing, 151–152 Pacesetting style, of leadership, 91
Monitoring and controlling process, Paralanguage, 78–79
144–145 Paralinguistic respiration, 65
Monitoring approach, Paraverbal communication, 64, 65,
communication, 63 66, 70, 71, 80
Monitor stakeholder engagement, 30 Participant/participation, 4, 5, 8, 9,
11, 14, 16, 20, 24, 32, 41,
N 56–58, 75, 80, 91, 92,
135, 148
National Project Management People, 15, 16, 21, 23, 27, 29, 32, 35,
Associations, 82, 151 62, 66–69, 72, 74, 88–94,
Needs, 5, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26–30, 31, 98, 101
32, 71, 81, 88, 101, 129, 144 ancestral capability, 66
Neuro linear programming (NLP), 66 competence area people, 29, 92
Neutral communication, 67, 71 growth, 90
Neutral stakeholders, 5, 82, 114 identify stakeholders, 23
Noise, communication, 61, 67–68, influence, 88
71, 80, 114 KPIs, 135, See also Key
Nonverbal communication, 58, 64, performance indicators
65–66, 70, 80, 83 (KPIs)
Norming stage, team life cycle, 94 monitoring relations, 35
stakeholders personal relations,
O 15, 16
Perceived/perception, 9, 14, 20, 49,
Objectives, 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 28, 55, 57, 60–66, 69, 72, 81,
48–50, 86, 90–94, 107, 110, 89, 90, 107–110, 116, 128,
113, 115, 116, 121, 123, 125, 129, 130, 134, 137, 140, 145
128, 132, 139, 140, 147 Performing stage, team life cycle, 94
Observation, communication, 63, Person, 3, 5, 8, 9, 11, 32, 35, 57, 70,
69, 70, 108, 122 72, 120
Index ◾ 165
Personal filters, communication, 60 planning, 23

Personal mastery skills, 83, 85–86 plan stakeholder management,
Personal skills, 83, 85–95, 100 27, 29
Personal stakeholders, 15, 16, 41 project communications
Persuasion skills, 69 management, 55
Pervasive/Ubiquitous Computing, 151 project management, 13, 16, 20,
Pharmaceutical industry, 135 22, 25, 27, 114, 140, 146
Physical noise, 68 relationship management project,
Physiological noise, 68 142–143, 144
Plan stakeholder management, 27, 29 stakeholder relations, 106
Planning, process group, 20, 22–27, value generation, 106, 108
31, 42, 55, 71, 93, 94, 121, Product/service life cycle, 49–50,
140, 142, 143, 148, 149 107–108, 116
PMBOK, 4, 18, 19 operation and management
PMBOK Guide, 19–30, 88, 89, (O&M) investment in, 105
143–145 Professional self skills, 80, 85
PM World Journal, 81, 151 Profitability, 40, 107, 133–134, 135
PM World Library, 82, 151 Program, 6, 9, 41, 99, 101, 149
Portfolio, 9, 41, 99, 101, 149, 150 Project, 9–10
Portfolio management, 149, 150 centrality, 8, 27
Posture, 66, See also charter, 22
Communication; completion, 9, 11, 22
Nonverbal communication complexity, See Project
Power/influence grid, 33–34, 35 complexity
Power/interest grid, 33, 34, 41, 42 cost, 106–107
Pragmatics, 56, 63 failure, See Failure
Process groups, 27, 120, 140 goals, 6, 7–8, 23, 24, 49, 50, 108,
Process/processes, 4, 13, 14, 16–30, 110, 114, 116, 125, 128, 132,
31, 38, 41–46, 53, 55, 56, 137, 140
60, 61, 80, 86, 93–95, 106, inputs of, 7
114, 120–123, 140–146 investment value chain, 7
administrative closure, 22 life cycle, 7, 27, 28, 31–32, 35,
communication planning, 22 37, 38, 42, 49, 62, 105, 108,
and competencies, 140 107, 109–110, 116, 128, 130
control stakeholder management, marketing, 81
27, 28 objectives, 6, 7, 23, 49, 50, 92, 94,
decision-making, 122 108, 110, 115, 116, 128, 132,
development and management, 122 139, 140
information distribution, 22 relations, 81, 82
manage stakeholders, 22, 23, 24, requirements, 7, 8, 21, 23, 45, 48,
26, 27, 29–30 106–107, 110, 114, 142
namesake, 143–144 results, 106, 110, 116, 119,
operational, 123 126, 128
166 ◾ Index
risks and changes, 109, Project Management Institute (PMI),

110–112, 111 46, 89, 97, 151
success, See Success Project management X.0, 150, 151
success rate, 6, 30, 50, 137 Artificial Intelligence, 151–152
unicity, 6, 8 augmented reality, 151–152
Project complexity, 21, 30, 46–47, Big Data, 151–152
130, 140–142, 146, 149 decision making support, 87, 152
complex projects, 125–128, 127 domain, 147–148
complicated projects, 123–125, global project management, 150
126, 127, 133, 139–140 inference an simulation expert
Cynefin Framework (simple, systems, 152
complicated, complex, Internet of Things, 151–152
chaotic), 122–123, 124 knowledge base of lessons
effective stakeholder learned, 150
management, 116, 137 Mobile/cloud computing, 151–152
facing successfully, 119–128 project and portfolio
operations (simple), 123, 124 management, 150
project management, 119, 121, semantic web, 150
123, 125, 126 web data, 150
rational approach, 119–120, 121 Project manager, 7, 9–10, 16, 91–92
relational approach, 119–120, 121 body language, 66
teamwork, 121–122 communication, 12–13
value, 102–107, 116, 129, 130, 149 community of, 11
Project delivered value, 107, 110, competencies, 50–51, 55, 83
111, 112 defined, 11
Project management, 6–17, 19–27, influence, 13
39–42, 45, 46, 55, 61, 68, interaction with other project
69, 74, 76, 82, 86, 88–95, managers, 13
97–99, 106, 113–115, 119, relations, 12, 13
121, 123, 125, 126, 129, 130, role, 12–13, 82–83
132, 136, 139–146, 147–151 stakeholder network, 82
classic, 132 time, 13
competencies, 148 Project stakeholder rose, 10, 12
complicated, 132 Project stakeholders, 6, 8, 10,
defined, 20, 21, 113 10–11, 12
discipline, 119 Project team, 7, 9–10, 13, 14, 16, 79
KPIs, 129, 130, 131, 132–133, Project value, 105
136–137 Providers, 39–40, 47, 48
processes, 13, 16, 20, 22, 25 Provision of training, 65
team, 10 Proxemics, 66
traditional, 132 Psychological positive automatic
Project management 2.0, 92, 126, response, 69
147, 148 Purchasers, 39, 40, 47, 47–48, 50, 132
Index ◾ 167
Q based thinking, 6, 8
and changes in project, 109,
Quality, 38–40, 108 110–112, 111
CMC, 79 communication, 79
communication, 68–69 stakeholders, 6, 8
deliverables, 110, 111 value, 109, 125, 148
information, 83 Roadway bridges, 136
management, 6
perceived, 14
S
R Saboteurs, 35, 36
Salience model, 33, 36–37, 37
Railway infrastructure, 135 Saviours, 35, 36
Rational approach, project Scarcity, 69
complexity, 119–120, 121 Self-assessment, 87
Receivers, communication, 68, 70, 75 Self-awareness, 86–87, 87, 90, 95
Reciprocation, 69 Self-confidence, 87
Reinforcing loop, communication, Self-control, 87, 91
54, 54 Self-management, 87, 87–88
Relational approach, project Semantic noise, 61, 68, 80, 114
complexity, 119–120, 121 Semantic web, 150
Relations/relationships, 4, 11–17, Simulation, 152
21–30, 31–38, 47, 49, 50, Skills, 20
51, 53–71, 73–83, 85–90, behavior, 5, 33, 38, 39, 49, 56, 63,
97–102, 105–112, 115, 116, 69, 85, 114, 132
119–134, 139–146, 148, 149 fifth discipline, 86
Relatives, 11, 15, 16 hard, 30, 55, 61
Reluctant stakeholders, 5, 11, 15, individual learning path, 85
137, See also Stakeholder(s) interpersonal, 70–72, 83, 85–95
Reports, 66, 67, 74, 75, 78, 137, 145 leadership, 92
Research infrastructures, 135–136 personal, 83, 85–95, 100
Resonant leadership, 86, 89, personal mastery, 83, 85–86
See also Leadership persuasion, 69
Respect, 70, 71, 82, 97–101, 135 professional self, 80, 85
Responsibility/responsible, 5, 6, 8, soft, 26, 30, 55, 61, 149, 150
11, 12, 65, 75, 94–102, 121, system thinking, 86
142, 146 Sleeping giants, 35, 36
Results, project, 106, 110, 116, 119, SMART rule, 137
126, 128 Social awareness, 86, 87, 88, 95
Risks, 6, 8, 24, 28, 32, 46, 58, 66, Social competencies, 88
68, 71, 72, 74, 79, 80, 90, Social proofs, 69
93, 94, 109, 110, 112, 119, Social value, 5, 17, 105, 130, 134,
120, 125, 133, 148, 152 149–150, 152
168 ◾ Index
Soft skills, 26, 30, 55, 61, 149, 150 network, 73–83, 77
Stakeholder(s), 3–18, 19–30, 31–44, neutral, 5, 82, 114
45–52, 53–72, 85–96, non-key, 73–74, 80, 82, 89
97–104, 105–112, 113–118, participants, 4, 9, 20
119–128, 129–138, 139–146, participation, 4–5, 8, 9, 41
147–152 personal, 15, 16
analysis, 27, 45–51, 63, 86 perspective, 7, 9, 26, 32, 106,
attributes, 36 108, 115–116, 117, 122,
behavior, 4, 5, 16, 33–43, 49, 125, 127, 149
56–57, 58, 63, 98, 100 positive, 5, 8, 15
114, 132 projects, 10, 10–11
beneficiaries, 8, 40 register, 23, 26, 27, 31, 41–43, 143
centrality, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16, 19, relations/relationships, 16–17, 30,
26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 38 37, 49, 105–112
communication, 53–83 reluctant, 5, 11, 15, 137
community(ies), 39, 42, 48, 49, requirements, 7, 8, 20, 21, 23,
61, 76, 106, 109, 129, 132, 47, 48, 106, 110, 113–117,
133, 143, 144, 146 126–130, 132, 140
cube, 35–36, 36, 39 responsibilities, 5–6, 8
defined, 3–4, 8, 24, 32 risks, 6, 8
disengagement, 5, 83 role, 5, 12–13, 19–30, 45, 46
dissatisfaction, 5, 48, 83 rose, 10, 12
doers, 4, 8, 16, 108 satisfaction, 6, 8, 21, 24, 54, 109,
engagement, 5, 8, 9, 28, 29–30, 113–117, 130, 137
122, 134, 142, 143, 144, 145 support, 4, 8, 15, 16, 35, 46
ethics, 5, 11, 97–102 typologies, 37
expectations, 6, 7–8, 20, 21, unicity, 6, 14, 69
23–24, 26, 28–30, 45–50, Stakeholder classification in
49, 107, 110, 113–117, communities, 106–107
126–130, 140 influencers, 39, 41, 47, 47–48,
historical aspects, 3 50, 80
hostile, 5, 11, 15–16, 41, 83, 137 investors, 39, 40–41, 47, 47–48, 50
hypercube, 39, 40 providers, 39–40, 47, 48
identification, 15, 22, 23, 26, purchasers, 39, 40, 47, 47–48, 50
31–43, 45 stakeholders hypercube, 39, 40
influence, 4, 8, 9, 13 Stakeholder multiple classification
interest, 8, 9 models, 33–38
key, 32, 34, 37, 54, 70, 73, 79, 82 power/influence grid, 33–34,
management, 17, 51, 116, 137, 34, 35
140, 142 salience model, 33, 36–37, 37
needs, 5, 20, 22, 23, 26, 28, 30, stakeholder cube, 33
32, 101 Stakeholder perspective, 106, 115,
negative, 5, 8, 15, 83, 137 116, 117, 122, 125, 127, 149
Index ◾ 169
Stakeholder relationship T
management project,
139–146 Talent Triangle, 89
immediate applicability, Team
140–142, 146 life cycle (forming, storming,
specific enhanced project norming, performing,
management processes, adjourning), 93–94
140–142, 141 teaming, 83, 85–95, 140
Stakes, 3–4, 6 team member, 13, 14, 16, 92–95,
Statement of Work (SOW), 7, 114 121, 145
Storming stage, team life cycle, 94 teamwork, 121, 149
Strategic goals, 6, See also Goals Technical project, 14, See also Project
Strategy/strategies, 6, 23, 27, 29, 30, Technical (delivered) value, 132,
32, 48, 49, 57, 106, 114, 135, See also Delivered value
143, 148, 149–150 Technologies, 151–152
cause/effect relation between Time, 106–107, 110, 121–122, 130,
stakeholder expectations 140, 148
and, 49 Time bombs, 36, 36
for engaging stakeholders, 30 Transmitter communication, 68,
management, 29 70, 75
planning, 149 Transparency, 87–88
stakeholder management, 23 Trip wires, 36, 36
Subjectivity, 21, 33, 36, 38, 48, 60, Two-timing stakeholders, 15
67, 110–116, 130
Success, 6–9, 16, 21, 23, 27, 29, 30, U
31, 32, 43, 45–51, 54–57, 69,
70, 72, 74, 78, 80, 93, 110, Unicity/unique, 6, 8, 14, 58, 69, 80,
112, 113, 115–117, 119–128, 94, 109, 119, 122, 123, 135
129, 130, 137, 139–140, 146, Unrevealed stakeholders, 15
147, 148
Success rate, 6, 30, 50, 137, 146 V
Support, 3, 8, 15, 16, 23, 32–35,
39, 41, 46, 53, 62, 66–71, Value, 4–8, 7, 11–17, 29, 32, 47,
75–83, 87, 93, 97, 106–107, 57, 60, 68, 69, 81, 87, 90,
116, 121–123, 126, 130, 132, 97–99, 102, 105–112, 107,
137, 139, 140, 149, 152 111, 116, 119, 121, 123, 125,
Sustainability indicators, 134, 126, 128, 129–137, 139–145,
See also Economic KPIs 147–152, 150
Sustainable smart cities, 135 business, See Business value
Symbiotic Web, 151 chain, 7, 47, 107, 131, 149, 150
Symmetric communication, 58 changes, 22, 109
Systemic approach, 45–53, 143 created/creation, 4–5, 8, 16, 106,
System thinking, 86 148–149, 152
170 ◾ Index
deliverables, 22, 106, 107, 110, social, 5, 17, 105, 130, 134,
116, 126, 130, 137 149–150, 152
delivered, 109–112, 111, 116, 132, stakeholder relations, 106,
139, 145 108, 109
develop, 105, 106 stakeholder satisfaction, 109,
exchanged, 16, 17, 105, 108, 109 110–112, 111
generated/generation, 17, 106, 108, Verbal communication, 58, 64, 66,
109, 110, 123, 125, 129–137 70, 71, 83
invested/investment, 7, 47, 47, Virtuous circle, communication,
105, 106–108, 107, 116, 54, 121
130–132, 131 Visionary style, of leadership, 89–90
measures, 126, 130, 142, 144 Visual communication, 64, 67, 83
metrics, 128, 129, 130
perceived, 107, 108, 109, 110, W
116, 128–130, 134, 137, 140
planned, 129, 147 Web 4.0, 151–152
project, 8, 15, 105, 106, 107, Web marketing, 136
129, 130 Written communication, 64, 66–67,
risks, 109, 125, 148 80, 83

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What are some of the principles discussed for effective stakeholder management?

What are some of the principles discussed for effective stakeholder management?

How does the book describe identifying stakeholders?

How does the book describe identifying stakeholders?

The Stakeholder

© 2020 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

No claim to original U.S. Government works

Printed on acid-free paper

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-367-18476-6 (Hardback)

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at

and the CRC Press Web site at

Part I THE STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVE

Part II THE RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT PROJECT

Stakeholders, those who influence or care about something,

Perhaps the best-known example of this was the project

This book is an evidence about Massimo Pirozzi’s under-

This book focuses on the centrality of people—the stake­

in order to be more effective, in an immediately manage-

The above contents are proposed in the light format of a

Many thanks to Russ D. Archibald, a globally recognized

Massimo Pirozzi, MSc (cum

many years, a top manager in ICT industry, and an adjunct

Stakeholders are persons, without a doubt: but why do we use

that the first modern meaning of stakeholders, which has

as far as other stakeholders would like to participate in the

it and an interest in its success”: conveniently, responsibility is

Figure 1.1 The project investment value chain.

The inputs of a project generally include, then, business case,

correspond to the stakeholder expectations in terms of created

◾◾ participates, or would like to participate, in the project;

Management Institute, 1987), stakeholders were considered

Figure 1.2 The Project Stakeholder Rose.

project management team and a Project Management Office,

◾◾ the project manager;

◾◾ the sponsor, the project steering committee or board, the

Project managers, who are they? In the project management

Figure 1.3 The Project Stakeholder Rose with some evidenced

furthermore, in modern project management, project man-

part of project manager’s time (literature reports percentages

◾◾ in project’s domain, the project manager has to lead

Definitely, project manager is the unique stakeholder who

forgotten and/or neglected by project management literature:

succeed to be disruptive for the project, as we will see in

generation, and the exchange, of business and/or social value:

The Recent Central

It is, then, a fact, that stakeholders are central with respect to

◾◾ stakeholders were present in project management litera-

In order to explain the above multiple answers properly,

actual milestones of the stakeholder role that was, and is,

about managing the relations with them, except two processes

For the rest, in this edition of the PMBOK Guide, in terms of

The following PMBOK Guide, the fourth edition (Project

clear if applied to generic “desires”, another key question may

The purpose of Identify Stakeholders process is “to deter-

after almost twenty years, stakeholder becomes a brand new

Plan. The process Manage Stakeholder Engagement, which is

Baseline) 4.0, there is a quite modern focus on stakeholder

◾◾ Identify Stakeholders, almost identical to the correspon-

This book focuses on the centrality of people—the stake