Systemic approach to project management: A stakeholders perspective for sustainability

Today most projects fail to deliver on time for various reasons. Reasons could be scope creep, unclear requirements, lack of right resources/budget etc. For project success it is essential to get buy-in from all stakeholders involved directly or indirectly. Different stakeholders are involved at different phases of a project. Though they are involved later, we still need to take their inputs at project start to avoid risks in future. It is quite possible that the project team gives importance to few stakeholders (whatever the criteria is) at the cost of others or it is possible to miss others thinking they may not be relevant at that instant. This paper outlines how to identify all stakeholders and get their concurrence systemically. We propose use of a holistic stakeholder matrix for identification of right stakeholders at right time; thus successful stakeholder engagement based on systems principles ensures sustainability for the project and so to the organization.