Exercise: Identifying Stakeholders (Project: CA Software Upgrade)

Project scenario: This projects intended outcome is an upgrade to a software application used in the internal business operations of an online retailer. The upgrade will implement new/enhanced functionality. The projects scope will include working with stakeholders to identify the new functionality that will be included, writing the software code, testing it and implementing the new version of the application in the companys IT environment.

Key information about you: You are an external contractor acting as the Project Manager, with lots of experience in software development and managing software projects. As the Project Manager, you will not actually do the business requirements gathering, software coding or testing for this project yourself.

Some key internal environmental factors to be aware of: Your client is the CTO at the online retailer. The software application that is being upgraded is the retailers proprietary customer analytics package, which is called Upward. The retailers business groups are: Customer Service, Marketing, Purchasing, Supply Chain, and Information Technology.

Scenario: Today you are having an initial fact-finding meeting with representatives from the five business groups: Uzma (Supervisor, Customer Service) Taima (Manager, Marketing) Hajin (Manager, Purchasing) Lucas (Manager, Supply Chain) Andrei (Team Leader, IT).

Your goal for this meeting is to identify and analyze the stakeholders for this project. Specifically, you want to: Identify which groups are active Upward users and will benefit from the new/enhanced functionality. Lets call this their degree of interest in the project. Identify which groups will be actively involved in the project work (business requirements gathering, subject matter experts, software coding and testing). Lets call this their degree of participation in the project.

At the end of this Q&A exercise, we will populate this table: Stakeholder Identification & Analysis Interest - High Stakeholder 1 Stakeholder 2 Stakeholder 1 Stakeholder 2 Interest - Low Stakeholder 1 Stakeholder 2 Stakeholder 1 Stakeholder 2

Participation - Low Participation - High

What Questions to be asked to know about Stake holders?