This paper outlines a high-level planning approach for developing a 48-acre mixed-use site that includes a nursery school. It discusses the critical importance of the planning phase in defining scope, schedule, and budget, and emphasizes the role of stakeholder engagement in avoiding costly change orders and miscommunications. The paper also explores strategies for identifying shared stakeholder priorities, eliciting latent requirements, and managing conflicting expectations through use-case scenarios and interpersonal negotiation. Risk management principles are integrated throughout to highlight how early planning decisions can mitigate project uncertainty.
The beginning point for this project will be the planning phase. The planning phase is one of the most essential segments of any project because it is during this stage that the scope, schedule, and budget are defined. The starting point of the planning phase is equally important. One step that is often overlooked is the inclusion of all relevant stakeholders so that their opinions about how the finished project should look — in terms of quality and functionality — are captured. Skipping this step makes it likely that clients and stakeholders will be unhappy with the finished project, and it could also result in a significant number of change orders required to meet end-user requirements.
One way to understand stakeholders' perspectives is to determine their values and expectations for the project. Failing to understand requirements is a significant risk for any project. There are many ways to mitigate these risks during the planning phase. Risk is defined as an event that has a probability of occurring and could have either a positive or negative impact on a project should that risk occur (Northrop, 2011). Therefore, steps should be taken to understand stakeholder values at a high level so that the project manager can remain in sync with them. When stakeholder values are understood early, a great deal of trouble later in the project can be avoided.
"Identifying shared priorities among multiple stakeholders"
"Using scenarios to surface latent client requirements"
Even if great care is taken to gather as much feedback as possible about the scope and schedule of the project, the risk of miscommunication remains. Furthermore, many stakeholders may have conflicting expectations. Examples of such intangible items that stakeholders may disagree about include market exposure, competitive issues, and organizational synergies (Lin & Pervan, 2003). Sometimes conflict cannot be completely avoided within the stakeholder group, and the project manager must use interpersonal skills to negotiate among the parties involved.
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