Method
Stakeholder engagement is consultation with people who will be influenced by or have power over a project.
Purpose
- To ensure all relevant people are involved and informed during a HCD project.
- To ensure organisational politics and hierarchies are respected.
- To ensure people that are responsible for delivery of the outcome are involved in the design process.
What you get
- Risks of poor integration, poor timing or duplication of efforts with other projects are avoided.
- A group of stakeholders who feel that they have contributed and have ownership over project outcomes.
- Broad input from an organisation into the insights creation, ideation and evaluation phases of a HCD project.
Strengths
- Assisting a HCD team to identify possible research participants.
- Assisting a HCD team to shape insights after research.
- Building empathy within the organisation via the sharing of research insights.
- Implementation of ideas are more likely when stakeholders have been engaged in the design process.
Weaknesses
- Thorough stakeholder engagement can be time consuming.
- Stakeholder engagement is not co-design. It often involves stakeholders being updated on project activities, rather than directly contributing.
Tips
Different stakeholders will need to be engaged differently. Tailor your engagement strategy to suit the level of seniority and level of involvement of each stakeholder.
Stakeholder engagement is an important first step in most projects. Expectations and assumptions should be documented before a project begins.
Toolkits and resources
Victorian Government: Stakeholder Engagement and Public Participation Framework and Toolkit
Getting all the Stakeholders on the Same Page
Updated