5Stakeholder & communication management

• 5.1Stakeholder identification & analysis

  Covers stakeholder identification, which surfaces the parties who affect or are affected by the project; engagement level (unaware through leading), which measures the degree of each party's involvement; and the power/interest grid, which the PM uses to judge how to allocate limited effort across stakeholders.

• 5.2Stakeholder engagement & expectation management

  Covers detecting early signs of resistance in stakeholders, choosing the right engagement strategy based on the power/interest quadrant, and techniques for visualizing expectations and reaching agreement to prevent expectation gaps before they occur.

• 5.3Communication planning

  Covers designing a communication structure that accounts for how the number of communication channels n(n-1)/2 among project participants balloons as headcount grows, choosing among push, pull, and interactive communication methods, and judging media selection to fit the situation.

• 5.4Project reporting & review

  Covers progress, status, and forecast reporting backed by evidence (backed by EVM), the phase gate, which judges whether to continue at the end of a phase, and countering optimism bias and delayed bad-news reporting.