You are managing a 14-month product development project currently in month 8. The project has a documented communications management plan that specifies monthly status reports to stakeholders. A key stakeholder who rarely attended review meetings or responded to status reports suddenly expresses strong dissatisfaction with the project direction during a chance meeting with your sponsor. The sponsor is now questioning your stakeholder management approach. Upon investigation, you discover this stakeholder's engagement level has dropped from 'supportive' to 'resistant' without your awareness. What should you have done differently?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct answer is B. Monitor Stakeholder Engagement is an ongoing process that involves tracking stakeholder relationships and adjusting strategies when engagement levels change. The scenario indicates a failure to monitor engagement continuously—the stakeholder's shift from supportive to resistant went unnoticed. Option B addresses the root cause: lack of ongoing monitoring and proactive adjustment of engagement strategies. This is a core responsibility in stakeholder management that goes beyond simply distributing communications. Option A is incorrect because increasing report frequency doesn't address engagement monitoring; the stakeholder already wasn't responding to communications, so more reports wouldn't solve the problem. The issue isn't communication frequency but rather monitoring and responding to engagement changes. Option C takes an adversarial approach that doesn't address engagement management, and option D focuses on analysis workshops rather than continuous monitoring and relationship management throughout the project lifecycle.

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