International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156
A Systematic Methodology and Guidelines for Software Project Manager to Identify Key Stakeholders Md. Mijanur Rahman, Mt. Musfika Moonira and Fatema T. Zuhora Department of Software Engineering Daffodil International University Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh {
[email protected],
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Abstract—Involving as many as possible of those who may be affected by or have an effect on any software project will lead to a better understanding, better process, greater community support as well as a more effective system. In order to gain all the advantages it brings to figure out who the stakeholders are, what are their roles and requirements and analyze them to identify which of them need to be involved at what level. Stakeholder analysis recognized the existence of a range of stakeholders and acknowledges that some stakeholders are more important than others, those are known as key stakeholders.When a project is carried out in a larger environment or greater range including various sections there need to analyze several facts and the complexity of that environment makes the task extremely critical. Different researcher uses stakeholder analysis for different purposes. But there have some lacks and in general there have no systematic methodologies which assist a software project manager to analyze and identify the key stakeholders. This study proposes a methodology that will assist a software project manager to identify the key stakeholders by analyzing them on the basis of their classification and impact on the project. Keywords— Stakeholder; Stakeholder Analysis; Stakeholder Identification; Stakeholder Management; Stakeholder Identification Methodology
I.
INTRODUCTION
Stakeholder analysis is the process of identifies the individuals or groups who may be affected by or have an effect on an effort and sorting them according their perspectives, importance, influence and classifications. The development of any system requires the involvement of a number of interested people. There is a broader range of
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people, groups, environment or organizations that have an interest or an influence on the development of a system [1]. Identifying the key people and analyze their perspectives from this broader range is a complicated task. If the identification process misses to obtain stakeholders who are paramount to the project, requirements become incomplete. Missing stakeholders implies missing essential requirements which subsequently increase project costs and promotes project failures. Every project must have different types of stakeholders. Each stakeholder has a specific requirement with respect to the project, which create fundamental conflicts with others. Conflicts are the root difficulties of most project management at both strategic level and at the tactical level. Identify the appropriate stakeholders from the right subject at the right time is one of the major factors of project success [2]. Identify inappropriate stakeholders will lead to the capturing of requirements which are not relevant to the system’s real need [3]. The ability to understand and manage the roles and requirements of various stakeholders is a critical task. To manage the requirements of various stakeholders a software project manager needs to identify the key stakeholders first with respect to the impact ability and the space of that stakeholders on that project. There are so many theoretical and practical resources for stakeholder analysis, but these systems are limited with proper scope of stakeholder management in the software development field. The term stakeholder is often used in software development but it is predominantly limited to customers, end-users, or project sponsors [4]. The software development field does not focus on project development team and in general no systematic methodology has been applied to software project development.
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International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156 This research study has to give more importance on this issue by collating and integrating essential selection elements in a form of systematic methodology. The methodology is aimed to be as a complete view of the stakeholders’ impact ability at the same time stakeholders’ space in a project, than identifying key stakeholder. We begin by offering a critical review of both traditional and more recent developments in stakeholder identification. By identifying critical weaknesses in the existing approach, as well as important points of strength, we outline an alternative approach that refines our identification method of stakeholders in important ways. The methodology uses some criteria (Knowledge, Interest, Power, Legitimacy, Alliance with other stakeholders) to aggregate the prioritization of each stakeholders depending on stakeholders roles, responsibilities and participations. Than the prioritization result will match with a table of stakeholder classification level that develops a matrix. That matrix creates a complete view of stakeholders including required information of them among the system, in simply a dimension view of stakeholders; as a result the project management team can take a fast decision that from where they should start to collect requirement or according to project purpose which ones requirements is more important. II.
A REVIEW OF STAKEHOLDER LITERATURE
The concept of Stakeholders is particularly ancient and since that time many researchers’ has enriched this field by their contribution. Several researchers’ contribution has raised different degree in the concept of stakeholder and stakeholder analysis system which has the support to the subsequent researchers’ even broadens the outlet of new research. The research interest in the field of stakeholder identification, analysis and salience is growing [5]. Stakeholder theories are being proposed and experts in the field are debating over the acceptability of these theories [5]. Percentages of stakeholder articles are growing relatively over the recent years [6]. The idea of “Stakeholder” was first heard respectively from Adam Smith (1759), Berle and Means (1932), Barnard (1938) [7]. But at that time none of them could able to make an appropriate explanation on this term. Gradually, the term “Stakeholder” has become a meaningful aphorism by the contributions of many researchers in this case and compatible with other cases.The actual word “Stakeholder” first appeared in the management literature in an international memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International Inc.), in 1963. The term was meant to generalize the notion of stockholder as the only group to whom management need be responsible. Thus the stakeholder concept was originally defined as “those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist”. The list of stakeholders originally included share-owners, employees, customers, suppliers, lenders & society [7]. Rhenman introduced a stakeholder model in 1964, in which he illustrated the two-way view on stakeholders: a company is dependent on the stakeholder and the stakeholder is dependent
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on the company in order to fulfill its goals and ambitions. Thus the stakeholder concept was originally defined as “are depending on the firm in order to achieve their personal goals and on whom the firm is depending for its existence”. Epstein and Votaw define the concept of legitimacy, which is the consistency of organizational action with social norms, which has been an important idea in public communication, from politics to management to public relations, for decades [5]. According to Suchman, gaining legitimacy should be handled pro-actively by conforming to societal expectations, selecting supporting stakeholders, and creating new ideas of what is legitimate behavior [8]. Pfeffer and Salancik (2003) constructed a model of organization environment interaction and claimed that the effectiveness of an organization derives from the management of demands, particularly the demands of interest groups. Freeman has contributed an extraordinary assumption by his Landmark book, “Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach” which is first published in 1984. In this book, Freeman shows with references that after the origin of stakeholder concept in 1963, the concept diversified into four different fields namely corporate planning, systems theory, corporate social responsibility, organization theory [7]. Freeman defines stakeholders as “A stakeholder in an organization is any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by the achievement of the organizations objectives.” He presented the stakeholder model as a map in which the organization is the hub of a wheel and stakeholders are at the ends of spokes around the rim. It consisted of one central circle, or oval, representing the firm, surrounded by a variable number of other circles or ovals with bi-directional arrows toward and from the central oval, each oval representing a group of stakeholders [7] [4]. While it is informative to understand the stakeholders in a firm, it can quickly become unwieldy to try to manage all stakeholders at once. Freeman developed a two-tier model that distinguishes between primary and secondary stakeholders. This model shows the firm at the center, and shows the primary and secondary stakeholder groups in the firm [9]. Freeman provides a solid theoretical basis for the understanding of the stakeholder concept and paved the way for extensive future research in this field [10]. Donaldson and Preston argue that authors use various theories that are often contradictory in their arguments [10]. They classify past stakeholder research based on three cores which, in their opinion, underlie any piece of stakeholder literature. They developed a stakeholder theory based on three reasoning: descriptive/empirical, instrumental and normative. Donaldson and Preston justify their claim that the three aspects of the stakeholder theory are nested within each other and the normative aspect is at the core of stakeholder theory. Instrumental aspect is at the second level and the external shell of the theory is its descriptive aspect. Another notable framework in this field was developed by Mitchell et al. in 1997 has become quite popular, as evidence by over 6898 citations in published work as of March 2015.
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International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156 The manager of an organization does not have the capacities and resources to respond similarly to all stakeholder claims. Some stakeholders will naturally have a higher degree of relative importance or urgency [11]. Mitchell et al. introduced the concept of stakeholders’ salience that is defined as the “degree to which managers give priority to competing stakeholder claims.” According to this concept the stakeholders can be categorized on the basis of three attributes: a) the stakeholders’ power to influence the firms, b) the legitimacy of the stakeholders’ relationship with the firm in a given social system of norms and values and c) the urgency of stakeholders claim on the firm with regard to its time sensibility and criticality. In this model a stakeholder can possess none, one, two or all three of the attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency. Stakeholders that possess none of the attributes are classified as non-stakeholders (8). Stakeholders that possess all three attributes are definitive stakeholders (7). Latent stakeholders possess one attribute, and are dormant (1), discretionary (2), demanding (3), depending on which attribute they possess. Expectant stakeholders possess two attributes, and are dominant (4), dangerous (5), dependent (6) [12]. Mitchell emphasize the dynamic character of the stakeholder approach by describing how stakeholders can shift from one category to another due to changing attributes in accordance with the situational context or the stakeholders decision to make or not to make use of the attributes [10] [12]. Most of the research on stakeholder theory has focused on an examination of the outcomes of addressing different groups of stakeholders, rather than explicitly considering the specific strategies that are applied to deal with stakeholders’ interests. Agle et al. confirmed the model of Mitchell et al. by examining that theoretical model with the help of empirical testing in 1999. Frooman makes a significant contribution in 1999 to stakeholder theory by modeling stakeholder influencing strategies to help management understand and manage stakeholder relations. He also introduced the idea that stakeholders may influence focal organizations indirectly, through intermediaries. According to frooman stakeholder theory provides a framework for answering these basic stakeholder questions namely; who are the stakeholder? What are their interests? And how do they achieve these interests? Each of these questions has led to the development of separate research streams namely stakeholder identification, stakeholder interests and stakeholder strategies [9].In the terms of organization ethics Phillips (2003) build an ethical dimension to the principles of stakeholder identification, discussing concepts at the time of dealing with stakeholders. Coplien and Harrison identify an organization patterns that directly address specific stakeholders also make a relationship among stakeholders. They provide guidance to building stakeholder relationship among software development team. In conclusion, this review of stakeholder literature has resulted that stakeholders have different concerns, objectives and responsibilities. In the literature it is claimed that the stakeholder identification problem is solved but when multiple
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stakeholders participate in a larger environment including various section, than the requirements of different stakeholders create fundamental conflicts with each other. There have no guidelines or systematic methodology for project management team to analyze and identify right stakeholders for right requirements in spite of this conflicting. These studies only cover some aspects of stakeholder identificationfor instance, stakeholders’ concept development, stakeholders’ classification, and stakeholders’ salience category. III.
THE PROBLEM OF STAKEHOLDER IDENTIFICATION
During the literature review, some problems were encountered to us when identifying the right stakeholders for actual requirement from a larger environment including the conflict of various stakeholders. Existing approaches for identifying stakeholders do not provide enough techniques or systematic methodology, for this conflicting. For instance, Freeman proposed a framework of the stakeholder model as a map in which the organization is the hub of a wheel and stakeholders are at the ends of spokes around the rim. It consisted of one central circle, or oval, representing the firm, surrounded by a variable number of other circles or ovals with bi-directional arrows toward and from the central oval, each oval representing a group of stakeholders [7]. But it can quickly become unwieldy to try to manage all stakeholders at once [4].Mitchell, Agle and Wood define a model for classifying stakeholders based on attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency that helps managers understand and quantify the degree of salience a stakeholder possesses [12]. In Mitchell’s model the category of salience of a stakeholder or stakeholder group can change over time if stakeholders decide to act in different way [4]. It is not enough to identify stakeholders and assess their salience [13] because the salience framework defines stakeholders’ level of impact on a project only if they decide to act [14]. Salience depends mostly on the number of attributes that a stakeholder possesses [14]. It is quite apparent that the more authoritative a stakeholder is the more their participation in the project is needed as well as the more their role is important [15].One of the major problem of stakeholder identification approach is that generic stakeholder list and this generic stakeholder lists are not appropriate for all context [1]. Generic stakeholder lists would fail to identify all relevant information systems stakeholders; because distinct stakeholder groups such as the systems developers and users are not included in the generic stakeholder groups. In the literature of information systems stakeholders fall into three main groups: users, management, and IS professionals. Unfortunately, this classification is much too indelicate and in most cases inadequate. It does not reveal the actors actual interests with regard to IS. It focuses on intended and observable aspects, ignores conflicts inside these three groups, and provides a much too simplistic view of the IS and how it affects an organization's members interests [16]. In conclusion, in order to deal with these problems we have developed a systematic methodology, which is not only
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International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156 classifies, categorized in salience or generalized with a list. We identify the actual stakeholders who involved in the software project, designates a specific roles, and their requirements are not conflict with systems specification. IV.
STAKEHOLDERS ROLES
A key initial issue in stakeholder identification is “who are an organization’s relevant stakeholders?” The success of a project can depend on to manage the expectation and to develop a support of project’s key people, who can have an impact to promote or demote on project success. Neglect them, and they will actively work against the project success. Manage them, and they will actively promote the project to success. To identify the key people it is necessary to list out who are related to the project and then find out the key people
from that list. Unfortunately there have no stakeholder guide to marking out the distinguishing features of the different species. So, a project manager or project team members need to know how to hunt out the stakeholders from a vast environment. There have some suggestions given by different scholars that helps to gather stakeholders list, like: Brainstorming, Mind Mapping, Previous Project Documentation, Organization Chart & Directories, etc. Several scholars focus on role analysis to gather stakeholder list [17] [18]. In this paper we are also focusing on stakeholder role analysis to gather stakeholder list based on most used roles in the literature, described in the following standardized categories in table 1 [17] [18]. These roles might be represented in any project.
TABLE I. STAKEHOLDER ROLES Stakeholders Role Functional Beneficiary
Role Description Those that benefit directly from the functions performed by the system and its products or results.
Financial
Those who benefit from the system and obtaining financial rewards.
Political
Those who benefit indirectly from the system, obtaining political gains in terms of power, influence and/or prestige.
Sponsor
Those who start the system development collect funds and protect it against political pressures and budget reductions, etc. They are in charge of the system development in all phases. This type includes people working with budgets and agreed times. Also called “legislator”. They are generally appointed by government or industry to act as regulators of quality, security, costs or other aspects of the system. They generate guidelines that will affect the system development and/or operation. Those who control the process and make decisions to reach agreements. Those that undergo some kind of damage as a consequence of the system implementation or are adversely by its development. They are also called “users” by many authors [18]. They operate the system, interact with the system and use its results. They are different from functional beneficiaries, even though their roles may overlap. They are familiar with functionalities and consequences of the system implementation. They widely known the implementation domain and can collaborate in the requirements elicitation to a great extent. Include any role dealing with providing support for any aspect of the system development. They are generally external to the organization and have specific knowledge on a particular area.
Responsible Regulator Decision-Maker Negative Operator Expert Consultant
V.
CLASSIFICATION OF STAKEHOLDERS
Different types of stakeholders exist in each project. Bittner and Spence propose to start involving stakeholders by first identifying different types [19]. Freeman divided his broad stakeholder groups into internal (customers, employees, suppliers, owners) and external (governments, competitors, special interest groups, etc.) [7]. Clarkson (1995) defines stakeholder issue into primary “without whose continuing participation the corporation cannot survive as a going concern” and secondary “those who have the capacity to mobilize the public opinion in favor of or in opposition to, a corporation’s performance”. Mahoney divided stakeholders into those who are active and those who are passive.
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Traditional identification of types of stakeholders constitutes an inappropriate framework and valuable information for a correct interpretation is missed [13]. It is necessary to avoid focusing only on those stakeholders directly related to the development and use of systems, such as users and developers [17]. The traditionally used term “internal” must be extended [20] because there have many designations in internal stakeholders and each of them priority and influence is differ from others. Only one criteria “internal stakeholder” can’t interpret the actual information about stakeholders. According to Management literature we divide the internal stakeholders into three categories: Operational, Tactical and Strategic. Table 2 specifies the classification of stakeholders which we have applied in our methodology.
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International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156 TABLE II. CLASSIFICATION OF STAKEHOLDERS Stakeholder Type
Internal Stakeholder
External Stakeholder
VI.
Description Internal stakeholders are those who work directly with the system such as employees, managers, owners. Internal stakeholders are normally implies the organizations inner stakeholders. An organization control involves using three levels operational, tactical and strategic to monitor their organization or system.
Operational: Operational level includes those who regulates with day-to-day outputs,
such as employees. Tactical: Tactical level includes those who involve with taking decision to achieve
systems visions, such as manager, consultant, and experts. They take short range decision. Strategic: Strategic level includes those who define systems vision, give direction to
achieve the vision and take decision, such as Owner, Sponsors. They take long range decision.
External stakeholders are the outside of the organization that are not directly working with the system but are affected in some way by their decision, such as customer, community, government.
the client and what the boundaries of the project are, there is a little chance to success.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The proposed framework is developed to identify key stakeholders and analyze them whereby stakeholders are conceptualized on the basis of their classification and impact on the project. In our literature we found that, project leaders and teams were working on untested assumption about identify key stakeholders and key stakeholders are somewhere neglected for the lack of proper information [21]. As a result of our research we can see a complete view of stakeholder identification tool that helps the project management team as well as a project manager to realize where should focus on. We have proposed a four step tactics to develop the complete view of stakeholder analysis. The steps are: Defining the project purpose or scope Listing the stakeholders of the project Assessing each stakeholders impact level to contribute on the project Matching impact level with classification level A. Defining the Project Purpose/Scope The first step in conducting a stakeholder analysis is to define the purpose of the analysis as well as define the project purpose. It is the most critical step, in case of start the project without knowing what supposed to be delivering at the end to
B. Listing the Stakeholders of the Project In order to analyze stakeholders at first it needs to figure out “who are an organization’s relevant stakeholders?” This step specifies the list of the stakeholders of selected project. For listing stakeholders we have applied the roles of stakeholders from table 1. It is possible to make a complete list of stakeholders using table 1. For example, when we are searching the answer of the basic question “who are an organizations relevant stakeholder?” than at first we are trying to find out the answer by applying few more questions like: “Who will get the benefit?”, “Who is the sponsor?”, “Who will be responsible for the progress or damage?”, “Who are the user, employee, and regulator?”, “Have any political impact on the system?”, “Have any stakeholder play a negative role?” and so on.These basic thoughts are come in mind frequently in the time of figure out stakeholders list. For these reason, we have applied stakeholders’ roles from table 1 to figure out stakeholders list. Table 1 covers all the relevant roles of stakeholders of any system. In the time of making the stakeholder list we are including following information of table 3.
TABLE III. STAKEHOLDERS LIST Stakeholder ID IDs are like S1, S2, etc. used for preparing the list of stakeholders.
Stakeholder Name Implies the name of the person, organization or any others.
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Role
Designation
Type
Responsibilities
This field will fill up according to table 1.
Implies the space of the stakeholder in the selected project that at which stage they are involved.
Refers a stakeholder type which is prescribed by the project management team after combining stakeholders’ role and designation and following table 2- the classification of stakeholders.
Summarizes the duty or obligation of the stakeholder to the system to be developed.
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International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156 The designation & responsibilities field in the stakeholder list will brighten stakeholders profile also which will assist for assess stakeholders’ impact level. C. Assessing each Stakeholder’s Impact level to Contribute on the Project This step includes two sub-steps to assess stakeholders’ impact scale. Firstly we analyze stakeholders’ characteristics depending on their profile which is revealed in table 3, and secondly we define stakeholder impact level depending on some criteria.
1) Stakeholders Characteristic Analysis: The next step is analyzing stakeholders’ characteristics. By analyzing stakeholders’ characteristic (Table 3) for each stakeholder depending on stakeholders profile from step 2 we will found the impact or ability to contribute of stakeholders (Table 4) on the project. The desired characteristics of stakeholders which need to be analyzed are Knowledge of the system, Interest about the system, Stakeholders Power, Legitimacy, and Alliance with other stakeholders.
TABLE IV. STAKEHOLDERS CHARACTERISTICS Stakeholder ID
Stakeholders Characteristics
Here goes Stakeholders’ ID like S1, S2… etc.
Knowledge:Information, skill, understanding, awareness is including of knowledge which is acquired by the person’s experience. Every
stakeholder in a system has a specific knowledge about the system. It is important to identify the right stakeholder. The field knowledge will filled by any of four specific values “High”, “Medium”, “Low” or “None”. Interest:Interest means the feeling to give attention to the system or of wanting to be involved with and to discover more about the
system. This level is important that brings advantage to or affect the system. This field also filled by any of four specific values “High”, “Medium”, “Low” or “None”. Power:It means “The ability to do something or act in a particular way, using power or leadership”. Power is very important issue to
select the key stakeholder. Different stakeholder’s power is different. This field also filled by any of four specific values “High”, “Medium”, “Low” or “None”. Legitimacy:Legitimacy is the quality of being reasonable and acceptable. Legitimacy is the perception or assumption that the actions of
an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within a socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions [22]. Project managers are usually more willing to pay attention to stakeholders whose claims they perceive as legitimate. This field is filled by any of two specific values “Yes” means legitimate or “No” means not legitimate. Alliance with others:Alliance in an organization is that which collaborates to support or oppose the policy. It can make a weak
stakeholder stronger or influence several stakeholders by dealing with one key stakeholder. This field also filled by any of four specific values “High”, “Medium”, “Low” or “None”.
Which keywords will appropriate for which stakeholders it is defined by project management team based on stakeholders’ profile from step 2. 2) Define Stakeholders Impact Level:There have total eighteen possible values among five fields. These values can generate many times using combination. If we’ll use a different impact level for different combination than it makes the process more difficult. So, we create some criteria to define impact level. According to impact level criteria there have total six levels: a) Level 0: There have no need to headache about these stakeholders, although they are related with the system and sometimes have an interest on the system but their requirements were covered by others stakeholders requirements. If the legitimacy is no and the value of others fields are low or sometimes medium than those are includes in level 0. b) Level 1: If the value of the field legitimacy is yes and the value is high for three fields or more than three
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fields than those stakeholders have highly impact on the system. Those are includes in level 1. c) Level 2: If legitimacy is no and the value is high for three fields or more than three fields than those stakeholders are dangerous or may have an negative impact on the system, these stakeholders also need to identify to overcome possibility of system fail. Those are includes in level 2. d) Level 3: If legitimacy is yes and the value is high for two fields and medium for other fields than those stakeholders have a good impact on the system. Those are includes in level 3. e) Level 4: If legitimacy is yes and the value is high for one field and medium or sometimes low for others fields than those have a moderate impact on the system. These kinds of stakeholders are includes in level 4. f) Level 5: If legitimacy is yes and the value of others fields is medium or low than these kinds of stakeholders have a little impact on the system. Those are includes in level 5.
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International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156 After analyzing stakeholders’ characteristics we define every stakeholders impact level (Table 5) using these criteria and the value of each fields of stakeholders from table 4. TABLE V. STAKEHOLDERS IMPACT LEVEL Stakeholders ID Here goes Stakeholders’ ID like S1, S2… etc.
Impact Level Here goes Stakeholders’ impact level like 0, 1, 2,… etc.
D. Matching Impact level with Classification level Finally in this step we match the obtained result from step 3 with the stakeholders’ classification of table 2. It makes a dimension view matrix (Table 6) that’s show a complete view of stakeholders or dimension of stakeholders including required information about them among the system; getting this result the project management team can take a fast decision that from where they should start to collect requirement or according to project purpose which ones requirements is more important. TABLE VI. STAKEHOLDERS DIMENSION VIEW MATRIX Impact Level
Classification of Stakeholder Internal Stakeholder Operational
Tactical
External Stakeholder
Strategic
Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5
The fields of this matrix are filled by combining the result from table 3 (Type) and table 5. Each field can contain more than one value and the value defines the stakeholders’ with their ID’s. VII.
CASE STUDY
We have been made a survey applying our methodology on an E-commerce project named “Digital Tech Bd.” for the TABLE VII. Stakeholder Id S1
Stakeholder Name Mr. Karim
S2 S3
Mr. Rahim Mohammad Hasem Sarker A.K.M Dellwar Hossain
S4
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purpose of a real life experience. We tried to fetch the actual information about stakeholders by viewing their profiles, doing a survey based on questionnaire and making discussion with all the individual stakeholders for understanding their expectations from the system. Apparently most of us concentrate our attention and think about that the “Digital Tech Bd.” has only two type of stakeholder group, especially customers and the internal of the organization (i.e., managers, employees). Other stakeholders such as suppliers, investors, and regulators receive disproportionately less interest. But during the time of our survey, we experienced that which stakeholders get less interest in general, sometimes their influence keep great impact on the system. And we also noticed that same requirements are found from different stakeholders. Various requirements from various stakeholders sometime make conflict to each other’s. In this situation we need to be set the impact level of those stakeholders and at the same time locate their space in the organization which helps us to figure out stakeholders all kind of dimensions. The following lines present the results that obtained by applying the proposed methodology in this organization. It does not constitute an exhaustive application. It is only intended to show its usefulness and some results that are found. The “Digital Tech Bd.” has been applied B2C (Business to Customer) principle in their project. The project purpose and scope of this organization is to create and maintain an internet business community that deliver a quality e-business site within the time, cost and project requirements defined by the organizations project team. Various stakeholders are identified by applying the roles of stakeholders from table 1 and listed those stakeholders with a certain profile according to table 3. Table 7 present some of them, with the information required for this step. Table 8 shows the characteristics of defined stakeholders and at the same time the impact level of each stakeholder. We have defined four values in our methodology (table 4) for Knowledge, Interest, Power and Alliance with others fields; that are High, Medium, Low and None. In table 8 these values are revealed by the initials of those ‘H’, ‘M’ & ‘L’ and no fields will fill for the value of none. Table 9 shows the matching result of table 7 and table 8 which revealed the dimension view matrix of stakeholders as well as the desired result.
STAKEHOLDERS LIST OF “DIGITAL TECH BD.”
Role Beneficiary (Financial) Responsible Expert
Designation Owner
Type Internal (Strategic)
Responsibilities Financial record, Business growth
Manager Employee
Internal (Tactical) Internal (Tactical)
Communication, Business Performance Technical Expert, Team play
Responsible
Supplier
External
Fair and Equitable Transaction, Placing Orders
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International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156 S5
Md. Selim Talokder
S6
Mr. Sha-Alam
S7
Mr. Rafik Alam
S8 S9
Mr. Shofiq Hossain Mr. Najmul Haque
S10
Al-Amin
Beneficiary (Functional) Beneficiary (Financial) Regulator
Customer
External
Billing, Payment
Investor
Internal (Strategic)
Legislative Member
External
Negative
Competitor
External
Beneficiary (Sponsor) Operator
Sponsor
External
Employee
Internal (Operational)
Communication, Evaluation of External Entities To Pass & Execute Proper Law, Maintenance Law Fair Competition, Environmental Raw Materials Procurement Promoting Products, Concerned about Own Marketing Operate the System, Serving Customer
TABLE VIII. ASSESSING STAKEHOLDERS IMPACT LEVEL BY ANALYZING CHARACTERISTICS
ID
Knowledge
Interest
H
H M L
H
M L
Power
M L
Legitimacy
Alliance with Others
Yes
H M L
S1
S2
S3
No
Impact Level
1
management team can take a fastest decision about selecting key stakeholders according to their project purpose. In table 9 S1’s impact level is 1 and it is in strategic type internal stakeholder field. Similarly S8 is in level 2 and external stakeholder field; S2, S6, S9 is in level 3 and respectively tactical internal field, strategic internal field, external field; S3, S4, S7 is in level 4 and respectively tactical internal stakeholder field and external stakeholder field; S10&S5 is in level 5 and respectively operational internal stakeholder field and external stakeholder field.
3
VIII. S4
S5
S6
S7
S9
4 5
4
S8
S1 0
3
4 2
3
5
TABLE IX. STAKEHOLDERS DIMENSION VIEW MATRIX Impact Level
Internal Stakeholder Operational
Tactical
Strategic
External Stakeholder
Level 0 Level 1
S1
Level 2 S2
Level 4
S3
Level 5
S10
S6
S9 S4, S7 S5
After completing all the steps we have found table 9 the desired result which we have wanted, it revealed a dimension view matrix of stakeholders from which the project
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This paper emphasizes on the importance of having right stakeholders according to project purpose and scope. Engaging right stakeholders is the premier need of successful project. Identifying the right stakeholders is the critical task in software development field. This constitutes a challenge to project management team for taking decision that needs to take during the project development time at different levels. The existing literature, however, does not provide any systematic methodology which assists a software project management team to analyze and identify key stakeholders. To overcome this, this work proposes a concrete methodology composed of steps for assists a software project manager to identify the key stakeholders by analyzing them on the basis of their classification and impact on the project. This methodology is flexible, since new criteria for selection can be added to the methodology that enhances the information and knowledge about involved contexts. The methodology will be applied for several case studies so that the limitations can be identified and hope we will also offer better solutions in future research works. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
S8
Level 3
CONCLUSION
First we express our heartiest thanks and gratefulness to almighty Allah for his divine blessing makes us possible to complete this research successfully.We fell grateful to and wish our profound our indebtedness to, Department of Software Engineering, Daffodil International University, Dhaka. Deep Knowledge & keen interest of our supervisor Md. Mijanur Rahman in the field of Security&Requirements Engineering keep us to carry out this research work. His
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International Journal of Research in Computer and ISSN (Online) 2278- 5841 Communication Technology, Vol 4, Issue 8 , August -2015 ISSN (Print) 2320- 5156 endless patience, scholarly guidance, continual encouragement, constant and energetic supervision, constructive criticism, valuable advice, reading many inferior draft and correcting them at all stage have made it possible to complete this research.We could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for our research study. We would like to express our heartiest gratitude to Dr. Touhid Bhuiyan(Head) Department of Software Engineering, for his kind help to finish our research work and also to other faculty member and the staff of Software Engineering department of Daffodil International University. Last but not the least; we would like to thank our family for supporting us spiritually throughout our life. REFERENCES [1]
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