ABSTRACT
The scope of a project should be considered as the result of all the possible overlaps between different “worlds” pertaining to each different stakeholder. It is important to remember that the most important stakeholder is the project manager who is the first one who steers the project by means of his or her cultural context, relationship network, and personality. This chapter deals with three huge driving aspects: ethnography, informal networks, and type-watching. Culture, in its wide ethnographical sense, is the complex set that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, habits, and any other skill and habit acquired by man as a member of society. Understanding the network of informal relationships is therefore important to understand the invisible mechanisms that are often the basis for good practices, defining in detail the tactic required to pursue planned strategies. Stakeholders’ maps inside the project should be revised adding other dimensions that take somewhat into account the culture of each individual.
