Any person or group with a vested interest in a project's outcome, including clients, sponsors, team members, and end users.
The client who's paying for the project? Stakeholder. The CEO who approved the budget? Stakeholder. The marketing director who'll use the website daily? Stakeholder. The developers building it? Also stakeholders — just a different kind.
A stakeholder is anyone who cares about or is affected by a project's outcome. That's a broad definition, and that's the point. Projects don't exist in isolation — they exist in a web of people with different expectations, priorities, and definitions of "success."
You might wonder what stakeholders have to do with resource scheduling. More than you'd think.
Different stakeholders create different pressures on the schedule. The CEO wants the project done fast because they announced a launch date at a conference. The project manager wants it done right and is pushing for adequate capacity. The client wants changes mid-project that trigger scope creep. The team lead is worried about team burnout from overallocation.
Every one of these pressures impacts how you allocate resources. The team that ignores stakeholder dynamics and just builds a technically perfect schedule ends up rebuilding it when the CEO overrides the timeline, the client adds requirements, or the lead developer quits.
Not all stakeholders are equal. A simple framework that works:
High power, high interest — The client sponsor, your agency owner. They can change the project direction and they're paying attention. Keep them closely informed, involve them at milestones, and never surprise them.
High power, low interest — The client's CTO who signed off on the budget but isn't involved day-to-day. They don't need weekly updates, but when something goes wrong, they'll step in. Give them periodic summaries.
Low power, high interest — End users, junior team members, adjacent department heads. They care deeply about the outcome but can't change the project's direction. Keep them informed and gather their input.
Low power, low interest — Peripheral parties. Keep them loosely aware but don't spend scheduling time on their needs.
Every deliverable should have a clear stakeholder who approves it. "Design approved" means nothing without knowing *who* approves it. If it's the marketing director, they need to be available during the review milestone. If it's a committee of three executives, schedule extra time for the approval cycle — because five business days of "we'll get back to you" can stall a project timeline faster than any technical blocker.
The project manager spends a surprising percentage of their time managing stakeholders — status meetings, email updates, demo sessions, change request negotiations. These hours are real, and they need to be accounted for in the project budget. An agency that budgets zero hours for stakeholder management will overshoot every project estimate because the PM is spending 10-15 hours per week on communication that nobody planned for.
Put these concepts into practice with WrkSched — drag-and-drop scheduling and capacity planning.
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