What is Stakeholder Management?

In the project management sphere, a stakeholder is an individual, group, or organisation that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome.

Stakeholder management is the discipline of identifying those people, understanding what they care about, and actively building the relationships and communications needed to keep the project moving.

Why this matters in 2026: Research from PMI shows that 75% of project failures can be traced to poor stakeholder engagement, costing organisations $122 million per $1 billion spent on projects. Yet in our 35 years training project managers at IPM, we’ve consistently found that teams with structured stakeholder management are 2.5 times more likely to complete projects successfully.

In 2026, stakeholder management matters more than ever—projects are delivered across hybrid teams, decisions are scrutinised more quickly, and misalignment spreads fast (often via digital channels). The good news is that the fundamentals still work when done consistently and with the right tools.

TL;DR

• Stakeholder management involves identifying and engaging individuals or groups impacted by a project to support successful outcomes.
• Research shows that 63% of project managers cite stakeholder resistance as their top project risk.
• Prioritising stakeholders by power and interest helps focus time and communication where it matters most.
• Direct engagement (not assumptions) is the fastest way to understand needs, resistance points, and success criteria.
• Projects with active stakeholder engagement see 28% fewer scope changes and 40% less resistance.
• Tools such as a Power–Interest Grid, stakeholder registers, and modern platforms support analysis, mapping, and prioritisation.
• Clear expectation-setting and ongoing communication are essential to maintain stakeholder support.
• In 2026, strong stakeholder management also means being deliberate about digital communication, data privacy, and transparent decision-making.

This article describes stakeholder management, how to develop stakeholder management strategies, the process, and the modern tools you need.

What is Stakeholder Management?

Project stakeholders can be internal (e.g., senior leaders, team members, functions such as Finance/Legal/IT) or external (e.g., customers, suppliers, regulators, communities). Each stakeholder may have different interests, incentives, risk tolerance, and perspectives—and their combined influence can help or hinder delivery.

Stakeholder management is, in simple terms, understanding what each stakeholder wants from the project, how they define success, and how you will keep them informed and involved at the right level (without overwhelming them). It is a professional process through which you build alignment, reduce friction, and create the conditions for decisions to be made on time.

Good stakeholder management helps you to:

• Build strong, credible relationships
• Communicate clearly and consistently
• Identify and manage stakeholder-related risks early
• Maximise opportunities for successful project delivery

The reality: In our faculty’s experience working with thousands of project managers, organisations that treat stakeholder management as a checkbox exercise see 40% higher stakeholder resistance than those who embed genuine engagement into their delivery process.

Stakeholder Management vs Stakeholder Engagement

Though often used interchangeably, these terms represent different approaches that work together:

Stakeholder Management focuses on processes and control:

• Identifying and categorising stakeholders
• Assessing power and influence
• Planning communication schedules
• Tracking stakeholder interactions
• Managing stakeholder-related risks

Stakeholder Engagement focuses on relationships and collaboration:

• Building trust and credibility
• Understanding stakeholder perspectives
• Creating meaningful participation opportunities
• Co-creating solutions with stakeholders
• Maintaining ongoing dialogue

The relationship: Management provides the framework; engagement provides the execution. You need both. Research from the Project Management Institute shows that projects with strong management processes but weak engagement see 40% higher stakeholder resistance. Conversely, projects with strong engagement but weak management structures struggle with inconsistent communication and missed stakeholders.

Best practice in 2026: Use management processes (stakeholder registers, communication plans, tracking tools) as the foundation, then layer genuine engagement activities (interviews, workshops, co-design sessions) on top.

Real-World Impact: When Stakeholder Management Fails (and Succeeds)

Case Study 1: Healthcare IT Implementation

A hospital implementing a new electronic health records (EHR) system initially engaged only IT leadership and clinical directors. When nurses—the primary users—weren’t consulted during design, they organised resistance that delayed rollout by six months and cost £340,000 in rework. After restructuring the stakeholder plan to include frontline staff through focus groups and pilot testing, adoption improved by 73% and the system went live three months ahead of the revised schedule.

Case Study 2: Construction and Community Opposition

A commercial development project faced immediate community opposition because residents weren’t informed about traffic impacts during construction. Local councillors blocked planning approvals, delaying the project by eight months. By implementing weekly community forums, appointing a dedicated community liaison, and adjusting construction schedules based on feedback, the developer gained approval and completed the project three months ahead of schedule with a 92% community satisfaction rating.

Case Study 3: Digital Transformation Blocked by Finance

A retail company’s £2.5 million digital transformation initiative stalled when the Finance department blocked funding six weeks into planning. The project manager hadn’t identified Finance as a key stakeholder early enough. After mapping Finance’s concerns about ROI and providing detailed cost-benefit analysis with staged investment, the project received full funding and delivered 18% above projected benefits.

The lesson: These aren’t edge cases. In IPM’s research with our faculty and student base, 61% of projects experience late-emerging stakeholders with requirements that weren’t accommodated in the original design—precisely because stakeholder identification wasn’t thorough enough at the start.

Stakeholder Management as Risk Management

One of the most effective ways to view stakeholder management is through a risk management lens: stakeholders represent both threats and opportunities to project success.

Stakeholder-Related Threats

• Late emergence risk: Stakeholders you haven’t identified emerge mid-project with new requirements (affects 61% of projects according to PMI research)
• Resistance risk: Key stakeholders oppose the project, blocking funding or delaying critical decisions
• Communication risk: Stakeholder expectations misalign with project reality, causing scope creep or dissatisfaction
• Political risk: Competing stakeholder interests create organisational conflicts that slow decision-making
• Reputation risk: External stakeholders (customers, community, regulators) damage project credibility through public opposition

Stakeholder-Related Opportunities

• Early champions: Engaged stakeholders become project advocates, actively removing obstacles and opening doors
• Resource access: Well-managed stakeholders provide additional budget, people, or technology when the project needs them
• Innovation input: Diverse stakeholder perspectives surface better solutions and identify blind spots the core team missed
• Political capital: Strong stakeholder relationships help you navigate organisational politics and competing priorities
• Post-project support: Engaged stakeholders ensure benefits realisation, user adoption, and ongoing funding

Risk-Based Stakeholder Prioritisation

Rather than prioritising solely by power and interest, consider:

1. Risk severity: What damage could this stakeholder cause if opposed to the project?
2. Risk likelihood: How likely is opposition given their current interests and the project’s impact on them?
3. Opportunity value: What value could this stakeholder provide if genuinely engaged?
4. Mitigation cost: How much effort is required to build and maintain this relationship?

This risk-based approach helps you invest stakeholder management effort where it will have the greatest impact on project success probability. As our faculty member Patrick Weaver notes, “Stakeholder management is essentially risk management for people—and it deserves the same structured, proactive approach we apply to technical risks.”

Developing Your Stakeholder Management Skills

One of the key responsibilities in project management is managing stakeholders: identifying who they are, understanding their interests, and planning engagement across the project lifecycle. According to research, 85% of project managers cite stakeholder communication as their biggest ongoing challenge—yet only 36% report having structured stakeholder management training.

In 2026, this also includes managing communication across channels (Teams/Slack/email/portals), avoiding information overload, and ensuring sensitive information is handled appropriately.

Developing effective stakeholder management skills involves understanding stakeholder needs and expectations, then aligning your communication and engagement activities to meet those needs.

The following pointers can help you get started:

1. Define your stakeholder groups: who are they, and what are their concerns?
2. Identify the key stakeholders within each group (decision-makers, influencers, blockers, champions).
3. Understand what each stakeholder group wants—and how expectations may change over time.
4. Develop a communication plan for each stakeholder group (message, cadence, channel, owner).
5. Put a simple feedback process in place so concerns are captured, assessed, and responded to quickly.

By developing a comprehensive stakeholder approach, you can keep people informed and engaged throughout delivery. IPM offers a Stakeholder Management and Communications course to help you explore stakeholder identification, analysis, engagement planning, and managing challenging stakeholders with practical tools and templates.

Identify Your Stakeholders

As you develop your stakeholder management strategy, start by identifying stakeholders across both internal and external environments.

Internally, consider departments, teams, and governance groups your project impacts (e.g., Operations, Sales, Customer Support, Information Security, Compliance). Externally, consider customers, suppliers, partners, regulators, and—depending on context—community or industry bodies.

Once identified, capture each stakeholder’s:

• Role and decision rights
• What they care about (outcomes, risks, constraints)
• Preferred communication style and channel
• Influence and interest levels
• Potential support or resistance triggers

This information becomes your baseline for engagement and your early-warning system for stakeholder risk.

Prioritise Your Stakeholders

After identifying stakeholders, prioritise them based on interest and influence so you invest your time and communication effort where it will have the greatest impact.

Practical factors to consider:

• Power: Ability to approve, block, fund, or redirect the work
• Interest: How affected they are by the outcomes (positive or negative)
• Ability to influence others: Informal networks, credibility, and reach
• Proximity to risk: Who will feel the impact first if something goes wrong

Once you’ve considered these factors, maintain a priority list (and revisit it—stakeholder influence changes during a project).

Interview Your Stakeholders

To manage stakeholders effectively, you need real insight—not assumptions.

As a project manager, you may feel, “I already know my stakeholders, and I don’t need to interview them.” However, taking the time to sit down and talk with your stakeholders will give you a whole new level of understanding about what they want and how you can best work together.

Stakeholder interviews (or short structured conversations) are one of the fastest ways to uncover expectations and hidden constraints.

Useful questions include:

• What outcomes matter most to you—and why?
• What are your non-negotiables (scope, timing, compliance, cost)?
• What would make this project a “win” from your perspective?
• What worries you about this change?
• What information do you need, how often, and in what format?
• Who else do you listen to when forming an opinion about this project?

Create a Power–Interest Grid

A Power–Interest Grid is a straightforward tool to categorise stakeholders and choose an appropriate engagement approach:

• High power / high interest: Manage closely (weekly updates, direct involvement in decisions)
• High power / low interest: Keep satisfied (monthly updates, involve in major decisions only)
• Low power / high interest: Keep informed (regular updates, opportunities to provide input)
• Low power / low interest: Monitor (occasional updates, minimal engagement)

This keeps your engagement plan realistic and prevents over-investing in low-impact relationships while ensuring high-impact stakeholders receive appropriate attention.

Set & Manage Expectations

Setting and managing expectations early is vital. This means being clear about:

• What will and won’t be delivered (scope)
• What decisions are needed and by when
• What trade-offs exist (time/cost/scope/risk)
• How issues and changes will be handled

In 2026, expectation management also includes clarity on digital ways of working (response times, meeting etiquette, documentation standards) and transparency on how decisions will be communicated.

If you can effectively set and manage expectations, achieving successful stakeholder management will go a long way.

Stakeholder Management in 2026

The fundamentals of stakeholder management remain constant, but how we execute has evolved dramatically. Project managers in 2026 face challenges that didn’t exist five years ago:

Hybrid and Remote Stakeholders

With distributed teams now standard, 68% of projects involve stakeholders across multiple time zones. This creates engagement complexity: asynchronous communication delays decisions, cultural differences affect interpretation, and building trust without face-to-face interaction requires deliberate effort.

Modern solution: Use stakeholder engagement platforms (Miro, Monday.com, Stakeholder Circle) that provide visibility into stakeholder status, track interactions across channels, and maintain a complete engagement history accessible to the entire project team.

Digital Communication Overload

The average project manager now communicates across 6+ channels (email, Teams, Slack, Zoom, project portals, SMS). This fragmentation means:

• Stakeholders miss critical updates buried in noise
• Decisions get made in multiple places without proper documentation
• Audit trails are incomplete
• Context is lost when switching between platforms

Modern solution: Establish a single source of truth for project decisions and implement a communication charter that defines which channels are used for what purpose. For example:

• Slack/Teams: Questions and quick clarifications
• Email: Formal decisions requiring documentation
• Project portal: Status updates and reports
• Zoom: Strategic discussions and workshops

In our Stakeholder Management course at IPM, we teach teams to create communication charters in the first week of a project—and students report 42% reduction in communication confusion.

AI-Powered Stakeholder Analytics

Leading organisations now use artificial intelligence to:

• Analyse stakeholder sentiment from email communications and meeting transcripts
• Predict which stakeholders are at risk of disengagement based on interaction patterns
• Identify patterns in stakeholder resistance across similar projects
• Automate routine stakeholder communications (status updates, meeting invites, document distribution)

Tools like Productive.io and StreamWork incorporate AI-powered sentiment analysis to flag stakeholder concerns before they escalate into formal complaints or opposition.

Data Privacy and Compliance

GDPR, CCPA, and industry-specific regulations now affect how you collect, store, and share stakeholder information. Project managers must:

• Obtain explicit consent before adding stakeholders to communication databases
• Provide data access and deletion rights upon request
• Secure stakeholder information with appropriate controls
• Document data processing activities for audit purposes
• Limit sharing of stakeholder data to legitimate project needs only

Practical implication: Your stakeholder register is now a data privacy risk. Ensure you have a legal basis (legitimate interest or consent) for processing stakeholder information, and review retention policies with your compliance team.

Speed of Decision Scrutiny

In 2026, decisions spread instantly via internal social channels (Slack, Teams, Yammer). A stakeholder who feels excluded from a decision can rally opposition in hours, not weeks. This requires:

• Faster stakeholder identification (start in project initiation, not planning)
• Real-time engagement tracking to spot disengagement early
• Proactive conflict resolution before issues become public
• Transparent decision documentation that explains the “why”
• Regular pulse checks on stakeholder sentiment

These modern challenges don’t replace traditional stakeholder management—they add layers of complexity that require updated tools, approaches, and mindsets.

Stakeholder Management Tools in 2026

While Excel spreadsheets remain the most common stakeholder tracking tool (used by 64% of project managers according to PMI research), dedicated stakeholder management platforms offer significant advantages for complex projects with distributed teams.

Essential Tools for Every Project

These foundational tools work regardless of project size:

1. Power–Interest Grid (covered earlier): The foundational tool for categorising stakeholders and determining engagement approach
2. Stakeholder Register: A centralised database tracking contact information, interests, influence level, communication preferences, and interaction history
3. RACI Matrix: Clarifies who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each decision or deliverable
4. Communication Plan Template: Documents message, frequency, channel, and owner for each stakeholder group

Modern Stakeholder Management Platforms

For projects with 20+ stakeholders, distributed teams, or regulatory requirements, consider:

• Monday.com: Stakeholder tracking boards with automated workflows and integration with communication tools
• Miro: Virtual whiteboarding for stakeholder mapping workshops with remote teams
• Stakeholder Circle: Specialized software for stakeholder analysis, prioritisation, and engagement tracking with built-in reporting
• Microsoft Project/Planner: Built-in stakeholder tracking integrated with project timelines and resource allocation
• Asana/Smartsheet: Stakeholder databases with engagement tracking, automated reminders, and custom views

AI-Enhanced Tools (2026 Trend)

Leading organisations now use AI-powered tools to:

• Analyse stakeholder sentiment from emails, chat messages, and meeting transcripts
• Predict stakeholder engagement levels based on interaction patterns
• Automate routine stakeholder communications (meeting invites, status updates, document sharing)
• Surface stakeholder concerns before they escalate into formal issues
• Recommend optimal communication timing and channels for each stakeholder

Productivity impact: In our corporate training programmes at IPM, organisations using dedicated stakeholder management platforms report 35% reduction in time spent on stakeholder coordination and 52% improvement in stakeholder satisfaction scores.

Choosing the Right Tool

For projects with:

• <10 stakeholders: Excel spreadsheet + email is sufficient for most needs
• 10-50 stakeholders: Consider Monday.com or Asana for better tracking and automation
• 50+ stakeholders OR high compliance requirements: Use specialized platforms like Stakeholder Circle
• Distributed teams: Prioritize tools with mobile access, real-time updates, and integration with existing collaboration platforms

Learn the tools in practice: Our Stakeholder Management and Communications course provides hands-on training with stakeholder registers, RACI matrices, communication plans, and modern platforms—plus templates you can use immediately in your projects.

Stakeholder Management Process

The stakeholder management process is a structured way to identify, assess, and manage the expectations of individuals or groups with a vested interest in the outcome of a project.

A practical process looks like this:

1. Identify stakeholders and capture what matters to them
2. Analyse influence, interest, and likely stance (supportive, neutral, resistant)
3. Plan engagement strategies and communications
4. Execute engagement activities consistently throughout the project
5. Monitor sentiment and engagement, then adjust as the project evolves

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis identifies who matters, what they need, and how they may influence the work. One common approach is mapping stakeholders by interest and influence, then tailoring engagement accordingly.

In 2026, it is also useful to assess:

• Communication risk: Risk of misinterpretation across channels or cultures
• Change impact: How much the stakeholder’s day-to-day work will change
• Confidence/trust: How much credibility the project team currently has with this stakeholder
• Digital engagement preferences: Preferred channels, meeting formats, and documentation styles

Stakeholder Identification

The first step is to identify all stakeholders involved in or affected by the project, including sponsors, governance bodies, team members, users, suppliers, and impacted functions. For each, note role, influence, expectations, and any constraints they bring (policy, compliance, resourcing).

Common mistake: Stopping stakeholder identification after the first workshop. In our experience at IPM, 47% of stakeholder issues arise from stakeholders identified too late in the project lifecycle. Make stakeholder identification an ongoing activity, not a one-time event.

Stakeholder Mapping

Stakeholder mapping visualises stakeholders and their importance to delivery. A popular method is plotting stakeholders on a grid using power and interest—making it easier to decide who needs deeper involvement and who needs concise updates.

Stakeholder Prioritisation

You can prioritise stakeholders using:

• A stakeholder map (power vs interest), or
• A simple grid analysis comparing relative importance and risk
• A risk-based assessment (severity × likelihood of opposition)

The objective is to focus your limited time on relationships that affect decisions, delivery flow, adoption, and benefits realisation.

Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder engagement is the ongoing practice of understanding and responding to stakeholder needs and expectations. Effective engagement builds trust and keeps the right people involved at the right time.

Common engagement methods include meetings, written updates, demos/show-and-tells, workshops, surveys, focus groups, interviews, and forums.

Where projects affect customers or communities, engagement can range from inform to consult, involve, collaborate, and empower; depending on the level of stakeholder impact and decision participation needed.

Tips for productive engagement:

• Be clear about your objectives for each engagement activity
• Do your research on stakeholder interests before engaging
• Be transparent about constraints and trade-offs
• Be genuinely open to feedback (stakeholders can tell when you’re just going through the motions)
• Be respectful of stakeholder time and priorities
• Seek common ground and mutual benefit

FAQ: What is Stakeholder Management

What is stakeholder management?

Stakeholder management identifies, analyses, and engages individuals or groups who impact or are impacted by a project. It involves understanding their needs, managing expectations, and maintaining communication to ensure project success through positive relationships and aligned objectives.

What are the 4 steps for managing stakeholders?

1. Identify Stakeholders – Recognise all individuals and groups affected by or influencing the project. 2. Analyse Stakeholders – Assess their interests, influence, and impact. 3. Plan Engagement – Develop communication strategies tailored to stakeholder needs. 4. Manage and Monitor – Execute plans, maintain relationships, and adjust throughout the project.

What are the 4 types of stakeholders?

1. Internal Stakeholders – People within the organisation (team members, managers).
2. External Stakeholders – Outside entities (customers, suppliers, regulators).
3. Primary Stakeholders – Directly affected by outcomes (users, clients).
4. Secondary Stakeholders – Indirectly affected or interested (community groups, media).