Gaining Project Acceptance

As project managers gaining project acceptance in a project from stakeholders is extremely important. In order to gain acceptance you must hear and address the stakeholders concerns early in the project development phase, this avoids stumbles and blocks later, keeping stakeholders involved even when they disagree makes the transition much smoother. In order to involve the stakeholders you must first identify them. Any entity who cares about the project and any group that represent those entities are considered stakeholders. Once the stakeholders are identified you must find a way for the stakeholders or someone that represents them to have input, this process can be very time consuming and may require multiple meetings.
Next you have to identify issues and address them in a timely fashion amongst your study group so once you are in a formal setting you can know what to expect and hopefully already have some viable solutions.
Now that you have identified the concern you must come up with a resolution that address stakeholder concerns and be committed to following through with the process to make sure the stakeholder issues are addressed.

Now you are ready for formal approval. You are well informed of issues and concerns that may arise and so are the stakeholders. By keeping stakeholders involved everyone is aware of the project and/or change and they don’t feel like the change is forced nor is it unexpected.

1. Stakeholders include any person, organization, or group that cares about, can affect or be affected by the project. Also, any groups that represents the interests of those individuals. These people can be a part of the company, general public, organized groups, and anyone else that has an interest in the project.
2. The most common stake holders include the general public, employees of the company, customers, organized community groups, end-users, business users, and local, state, and federal agencies.
3. The 5 key elements used by the