ABSTRACT
Project managers have believed that it is up to them-and them alone-to do “whatever it takes” to make the project successful. Sometimes they do not even really know what success looks like, but they know that they have to do it anyway. But, despite their most heroic efforts, most do not succeed in achieving this elusive objective. The project manager cannot deliver project outcomes alone. To build success, the project manager has to enlist the support of all the project’s stakeholders through the medium of the organization’s communication ecosystem (see Chapter 1). Achieving this support requires a thorough understanding of who is in the community and what they want and expect from the project. This chapter focuses on defining the stakeholder community and providing guidance on developing an approach to building the essential, but often unstable, relationships* needed to support the successful delivery of the project. Until the stakeholder community is known and understood, efforts for meeting stakeholder expectations and building relationships with them cannot be effective.
