Effective Stakeholder Management in Technical Projects

Introduction

Project failures rarely result from technical incompetence. More often, they result from poor stakeholder management—misaligned expectations, inadequate communication, unaddressed concerns, and unresolved conflicts among the people who matter most to project success. A perfectly engineered technical solution becomes worthless if stakeholders don't understand it, don't trust the team delivering it, or actively resist it. Conversely, projects with engaged stakeholders who understand the vision and trust the team overcome technical challenges that would otherwise derail projects.

Effective stakeholder management is a distinct skill set requiring emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, communication expertise, and persistence. Yet many technical professionals treat stakeholder management as tangential to "real" work—a soft skill less important than technical excellence. This perspective blinds organizations to a fundamental truth: stakeholder management is not secondary to project success; it is foundational to it.

This comprehensive guide explores the principles, practices, and strategies for effective stakeholder management in technical projects. By mastering these approaches, project leaders can align diverse interests, build trust, manage expectations, and create conditions where technical teams deliver solutions that stakeholders genuinely want and actively support.

Understanding Stakeholders: Who They Are and Why They Matter

Stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations with an interest in or ability to influence project outcomes. This definition encompasses far more people than many project managers initially recognize. Obvious stakeholders include project sponsors funding the work and end-users benefiting from deliverables. Less obvious stakeholders include affected employees who fear job displacement, competing departments seeking budget allocation, regulators ensuring compliance, and influential individuals wielding informal power.

Types of Stakeholders:

Internal Stakeholders: Project team members, managers, executives, and employees within the organization. Internal stakeholders have formal relationships defined by organizational structures and may have competing priorities across multiple projects.

External Stakeholders: Clients, vendors, regulators, partners, and community members outside the organization. External stakeholders introduce complexity through independent agendas, different organizational cultures, and limited ability to influence.

End-Users: Individuals who will ultimately use the product or service. Often overlooked during planning phases, end-users become critically important when solutions fail to meet their actual needs.

Decision-Makers: Executives and managers holding authority to approve, fund, or halt projects. These stakeholders typically have limited time availability and require succinct, high-level communication.

Influencers: Individuals without formal decision authority but with significant persuasive power. Technical experts, respected managers, and trusted colleagues often serve as influencers whose opinions shape stakeholder perceptions.

Why Stakeholder Management Matters

Research shows that 1 in 3 project failures trace directly to poor stakeholder management. The business impact extends beyond individual projects:

• Budget Impact: Projects with engaged stakeholders complete on budget and on time 50% more often than projects with poor stakeholder management
• Quality Impact: Stakeholder involvement in requirements ensures final deliverables meet actual needs, reducing rework and disappointment
• Adoption Impact: Users actively engaged in solution development adopt solutions faster and more completely
• Organizational Impact: Successful stakeholder management builds organizational trust and credibility, facilitating future projects

Stakeholder Identification and Analysis

Effective stakeholder management begins with systematic identification and analysis. Treating this phase superficially—identifying only obvious stakeholders—creates blind spots that manifest as surprises during implementation.

Stakeholder Identification Process

Brainstorming: Gather project leadership and diverse perspectives to brainstorm potential stakeholders. Ask: Who cares about this project? Who could be affected by this project? Who controls resources we need? Who could block us? Who has political power?

Organizational Mapping: Review organizational charts, decision-making processes, and reporting relationships to identify formal stakeholders. This structured approach catches stakeholders easily missed through casual brainstorming.

Functional Analysis: Examine functions affected by the project—finance (budgets), operations (implementation), marketing (user-facing aspects), IT (infrastructure)—and identify representatives from each function.

External Scanning: Look beyond organizational boundaries. Identify regulators, compliance bodies, industry associations, and customers who should be involved. Missing external stakeholders creates compliance risks and market acceptance problems.

Continuous Discovery: Stakeholder identification continues throughout project execution. As projects unfold, new stakeholders emerge who were initially invisible. Regular stakeholder review ensures you capture emerging stakeholders before they become problems.

Stakeholder Analysis Framework

Once stakeholders are identified, systematic analysis prioritizes engagement efforts and customizes engagement strategies.

Influence/Interest Grid: Plot stakeholders on a two-axis grid measuring influence (ability to affect project) and interest (degree of concern about project). This analysis produces four categories:

• High Influence, High Interest (Manage Closely): Key stakeholders requiring frequent communication and deep involvement in decisions. Examples: project sponsor, chief architect, regulatory approver.

• High Influence, Low Interest (Keep Satisfied): Stakeholders capable of derailing projects but currently disengaged. Require sufficient communication to maintain support without overwhelming them with detail. Examples: senior executives, competing department heads.

• Low Influence, High Interest (Keep Informed): Engaged stakeholders without formal decision authority. Their enthusiasm supports project momentum and they can shift opinions of influential stakeholders. Examples: enthusiastic end-users, team members.

• Low Influence, Low Interest (Monitor): Stakeholders with minimal impact on project success. Require basic communication but shouldn't consume management attention. Examples: peripheral departments, minor vendors.

Stakeholder Power/Interest Matrix: Complements influence/interest analysis by examining power (structural authority to affect project) separately from influence (total persuasive ability). Some stakeholders have formal power but low influence; others have high influence despite low formal power.

Stakeholder Register: Document key stakeholder information including name, role, organization, contact information, level of influence, primary interests, concerns, communication preferences, current engagement level, and desired engagement level. This living document provides shared reference for the team and reveals stakeholder patterns.

Stakeholder Engagement Strategy

Identifying stakeholders is prerequisite to engagement; engagement is prerequisite to success. Engagement strategies should be deliberately designed, not reactive or ad-hoc.

Defining Engagement Objectives

For each stakeholder group, define specific engagement objectives answering: What is our desired outcome with this stakeholder? Should they understand the vision? Support budget allocation? Approve designs? Participate in testing? Accept implementation?

This clarity enables intentional communication rather than generic updates. Different stakeholders need different information at different times, delivered through different channels, with different emphasis.

Developing Communication Plans

Comprehensive stakeholder communication plans specify:

Content: What information does each stakeholder need? Technical details matter to architects; business impact matters to executives; usability matters to end-users. Tailor content to stakeholder interests.

Channels: How should information be delivered? Some stakeholders prefer email updates; others want monthly meetings; executives prefer dashboards. Communication channel mismatches lead to information gaps despite significant effort.

Frequency: How often should stakeholders be contacted? Daily communication overwhelms some stakeholders; monthly communication under-informs others. Frequency should match stakeholder interest and decision-making needs.

Messengers: Who should deliver messages? Direct communication from project sponsors carries more weight than intermediaries. Some stakeholders respond better to peer communication than hierarchical communication.

Feedback Mechanisms: How will stakeholders provide input? Effective engagement is two-way. Create explicit mechanisms for stakeholders to voice concerns, ask questions, and provide feedback.

Building Trust

Trust is the foundation enabling all other stakeholder engagement activities. Without trust, stakeholders interpret communications skeptically and resist suggestions. With trust, stakeholders grant project leaders benefit of the doubt when challenges arise.

Trust-Building Practices:

Transparency: Honest communication about progress, challenges, and risks builds credibility. Hiding problems or presenting misleading optimism destroys trust permanently. Sharing challenges demonstrates confidence and invites collaborative problem-solving.

Consistency: Reliable follow-through on commitments builds trust over time. If you promise to investigate an issue and report findings by Friday, deliver. Repeated reliability creates trust deposits enabling withdrawal during inevitable crises.

Competence Demonstration: Stakeholders trust competent teams more readily than incompetent teams. Demonstrate expertise through quality decisions, thorough analysis, and successful problem resolution. Admitting knowledge gaps while addressing them maintains trust; pretending expertise you lack destroys it.

Inclusion: Stakeholders trust teams that include them in decisions affecting them. Solicit input on controversial choices, explain reasoning when accepting suggestions and rejecting others, and treat stakeholder input as valuable. Exclusion from decisions creates resentment and resistance.

Respect: Genuinely respect stakeholder perspectives, motivations, and constraints even when disagreeing with their positions. Respect creates space for collaborative problem-solving; contempt creates adversarial relationships.

Managing Expectations: The Critical Art

Among the most challenging stakeholder management activities is expectation management. Projects consistently fail to meet stakeholder expectations not necessarily because projects fail technically but because expectations were unrealistic, misaligned, or never clearly defined.

Setting Clear Baseline Expectations

Early in projects, establish written project charters or statements of work clearly defining:

Scope: What is included and what is explicitly excluded? Clear scope boundaries prevent scope creep (continuous addition of work) that frustrates stakeholders expecting fixed deliverables.

Deliverables: What specific outputs will the project produce? Ambiguous deliverable descriptions lead to disagreements about whether deliverables meet requirements.

Timeline: What are key milestones? When will deliverables be complete? Stakeholders form expectations about availability based on communicated timelines.

Budget: What resources are allocated? Some stakeholders don't understand budget implications of requirements; clarifying budgets forces realistic discussions.

Success Criteria: How will we know the project succeeded? Ambiguous success measures lead to disagreement about whether the project achieved goals.

Assumptions: What are we assuming to be true? Documenting assumptions prevents surprises when assumptions prove incorrect.

Continuously Communicating Progress Against Expectations

Initial charter isn't sufficient. Regular communication comparing actual progress to baseline expectations keeps stakeholders informed and enables timely adjustment.

Status Reporting: Weekly or bi-weekly status reports should clearly indicate schedule adherence (on time, at risk, late), budget adherence (on budget, over budget), scope status (on scope, scope changes), and quality status (meeting standards or not). Use simple color coding (green/yellow/red) enabling quick status assessment.

Milestone Reviews: As projects reach milestones, conduct reviews verifying deliverables meet specifications. This prevents situations where stakeholders discover deliverables don't meet expectations only upon completion.

Risk Transparency: Communicate emerging risks and mitigation strategies. Stakeholders who understand risks can help solve problems; stakeholders surprised by risks feel betrayed and lose confidence.

Variance Analysis: When actuals deviate from plan, explain the variance and corrective actions. Unexplained deviations create concern and uncertainty.

Managing Unrealistic Expectations

Despite careful planning, stakeholders sometimes hold unrealistic expectations. Addressing unrealistic expectations directly but respectfully prevents crises upon project completion.

Diagnosis: Understand why expectations are unrealistic. Are they based on misunderstandings of requirements? Insufficient analysis? Optimistic assumptions? Historical precedent? Understanding root causes enables appropriate responses.

Education: If unrealistic expectations stem from misunderstandings, provide additional information and explanation. Involve stakeholders in analysis demonstrating why expectations are unrealistic.

Negotiation: If unrealistic expectations stem from conflicting priorities (more features, faster schedule, lower budget), facilitate negotiations among stakeholders establishing realistic tradeoffs. Help stakeholders understand that "all three" is impossible; difficult tradeoffs are unavoidable.

Renegotiation: If scope, schedule, or budget assumptions change, renegotiate expectations rather than accepting failure. Explaining changed circumstances and proposing adjusted timelines or resources is far preferable to missing original commitments.

Communication Excellence: The Heart of Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management fundamentally succeeds or fails based on communication quality. Poor communication creates misunderstandings that compound into conflicts; excellent communication prevents many problems from emerging.

Understanding Stakeholder Communication Preferences

Stakeholders have different communication preferences based on personality, role, and information needs. Adapting to stakeholder preferences demonstrates respect and increases communication effectiveness.

Executive Communication: Senior executives generally prefer brief, high-level updates focusing on business impact, resource needs, and risk/opportunity. They lack time for technical detail and generally want bottom-line conclusions rather than detailed analysis.

Technical Communication: Architects and technical experts prefer detailed technical discussion and thorough analysis. They want to understand not just conclusions but reasoning supporting them.

Operational Communication: Operations and IT staff want practical information about implementation details, timelines, and resource requirements. They need information enabling them to prepare operational support.

User Communication: End-users want to understand how solutions will affect them and what training/support they'll receive. Technical architecture matters far less than practical usability.

Crafting Messages for Different Audiences

Same information must be presented differently for different audiences:

For Executives:

• Lead with business impact (revenue, cost, risk)
• Provide one-page summaries
• Include recommended decision points
• Use dashboards rather than detailed reports

For Technical Stakeholders:

• Provide thorough technical detail
• Explain design rationale
• Include technical trade-off analysis
• Invite technical discussion and debate

For Operational Stakeholders:

• Focus on implementation logistics
• Include timelines and resource needs
• Address operational impact
• Discuss ongoing support requirements

For End-Users:

• Emphasize benefits and changes to work processes
• Explain training and support available
• Address "what's in it for me?"
• Use language avoiding technical jargon

Creating Stakeholder-Specific Communication Plans

Document communication plans for key stakeholders specifying content, channels, frequency, and messengers. This planning ensures no critical stakeholder is overlooked and communication remains consistent and intentional.

Example Communication Plan Structure:

Stakeholder Engagement Throughout the Project Lifecycle

Stakeholder needs and optimal engagement strategies vary across project phases. Effective project managers adjust engagement approaches as projects progress.

Initiation Phase: Building Foundation

During initiation, stakeholders should be identifying needs, defining vision, and establishing commitment.

Key Activities:

• Conduct stakeholder interviews understanding needs and concerns
• Present project vision and charter for stakeholder review
• Secure stakeholder commitment and identify representatives
• Establish stakeholder governance (steering committee, review boards)
• Document baseline expectations

Success Indicator: Stakeholders agree on project vision and have clear understanding of their roles.

Planning Phase: Detailed Collaboration

During planning, stakeholders should participate in requirements definition, schedule development, and risk assessment.

Key Activities:

• Conduct requirements workshops with key stakeholders
• Present draft plans for stakeholder review
• Address stakeholder concerns about plans
• Secure formal approval of plans
• Establish communication cadence

Success Indicator: Stakeholders understand detailed plans and have contributed input shaping them.

Execution Phase: Progress Communication

During execution, stakeholders should receive regular progress updates and opportunity to address emerging issues.

Key Activities:

• Conduct regular status reviews (weekly or bi-weekly)
• Address emerging risks collaboratively
• Make scope decisions when changes are requested
• Resolve escalated conflicts and blockers
• Maintain two-way communication channels

Success Indicator: Stakeholders feel informed and have confidence in project progress.

Monitoring/Control Phase: Course Correction

During monitoring, stakeholders should understand project variances and mitigation strategies.

Key Activities:

• Present variance analysis (schedule, budget, scope, quality)
• Discuss mitigation strategies and tradeoffs
• Approve scope changes when necessary
• Assess progress against success criteria
• Adjust plans as needed

Success Indicator: Stakeholders understand project status and approve corrective actions.

Closing Phase: Validation and Lessons

During closing, stakeholders should verify deliverables meet acceptance criteria and participate in lessons learned.

Key Activities:

• Conduct user acceptance testing with stakeholders
• Verify deliverables meet requirements
• Document lessons learned and improvements
• Celebrate project completion
• Plan ongoing support and sustainment

Success Indicator: Stakeholders accept deliverables and feel project addressed their needs.

Managing Difficult Stakeholders

Some stakeholder relationships are straightforward; others are complex and frustrating. Difficult stakeholders consume disproportionate management attention but require deliberate, respectful approaches rather than avoidance or confrontation.

Understanding Difficult Stakeholder Patterns

The Blocker: Consistently raises objections, points out problems, and questions decisions. Often their concerns are valid; they help identify risks. Sometimes they're resistant to change or protecting past decisions.

The Ghost: Unavailable when needed, misses meetings, delays approvals. Often they're overwhelmed or have competing priorities; sometimes they're passive-aggressive resistance.

The Micromanager: Demands excessive oversight, questions every detail, second-guesses decisions. Often they're anxious about project success or don't trust the team.

The Over-Promiser: Commits to unrealistic deliverables or changes, setting up false expectations. Often they're eager to please or underestimate complexity.

The Skeptic: Doubts the project's value or approach. Often their skepticism is justified by past project failures; sometimes it's organizational politics.

The Political Player: Cares more about organizational politics than project success. Often seeking credit, protecting turf, or building alliances.

Strategies for Difficult Stakeholders

Seek Understanding First: Before reacting to difficult behavior, understand underlying motivations and concerns. What are they worried about? What do they want? What past experiences shape their behavior?

Establish Clear Boundaries: Difficult stakeholders sometimes exploit ambiguous authority or unclear processes. Clear decision-making authority, approval processes, and escalation paths prevent stakeholders from creating havoc through process manipulation.

Address Concerns Directly: If a stakeholder is skeptical, understand their concerns specifically and address them directly. Provide evidence, involve them in problem-solving, or escalate to senior leadership if their concerns require executive resolution.

Build Relationships: Most difficult stakeholder relationships improve significantly once you establish genuine working relationships. Invest time understanding them personally, find common ground, and demonstrate respect for their perspective.

Separate Personality from Position: A difficult stakeholder's personality may be challenging while their positions are thoughtful. Evaluate positions on merit without allowing personality conflicts to cloud judgment.

Know When to Escalate: Not every difficult stakeholder problem can be resolved at project level. If relationship problems are preventing project progress, escalate to senior leadership for intervention.

Creating Accountability Through Stakeholder Responsibility

Accountability frameworks clarify who is responsible for what decisions and activities, preventing confusion and enabling efficient decision-making.

RACI Matrix

The RACI matrix assigns responsibility across four categories:

Responsible: Who actually performs the work or makes the decision? Every task should have exactly one responsible party.

Accountable: Who is ultimately answerable for success or failure? Usually higher level than responsible party.

Consulted: Who should be asked for input before decision or action? Subject matter experts and affected parties.

Informed: Who needs to know about the decision or action? Stakeholders affected by outcomes but not involved in decisions.

RACI matrices prevent ambiguity where everyone thinks someone else is responsible, and no one takes ownership.

Measuring Stakeholder Engagement Effectiveness

Like other project aspects, stakeholder engagement should be measured to verify effectiveness and identify improvements.

Key Metrics

Stakeholder Satisfaction: Survey stakeholders on satisfaction with project communication, involvement, and responsiveness. Declining satisfaction signals engagement problems.

Escalation Rate: How many issues are escalated to senior leadership? High escalation rates suggest stakeholder management isn't resolving issues at appropriate levels.

Requirements Rework: Percentage of requirements requiring rework due to misunderstanding or incompleteness. High rework indicates insufficient stakeholder involvement in requirements definition.

Scope Change Rate: Percentage of scope changes requested by stakeholders. High rates suggest initial scope wasn't well-understood or stakeholder needs weren't properly captured.

On-Time Milestone Delivery: Are stakeholder-driven milestones completed on schedule? Delayed milestones often result from stakeholder unavailability or inadequate engagement.

Stakeholder Attendance: Percentage of stakeholders attending planned engagement activities. Low attendance suggests insufficient stakeholder interest or poorly timed meetings.

Best Practices and Frameworks

Organizations excelling at stakeholder management consistently employ certain practices and frameworks.

Stakeholder Engagement Plan

Formal stakeholder engagement plans document stakeholder identification, analysis, engagement strategies, communication plans, and responsibility assignments. Creating plans during initiation and updating them regularly ensures systematic, intentional stakeholder management.

Regular Stakeholder Reviews

Monthly or quarterly stakeholder reviews assess engagement effectiveness, identify emerging issues, and adjust engagement strategies. These reviews prevent stakeholder problems from festering unaddressed.

Escalation Procedures

Clear escalation procedures specify how issues unresolved at project level are elevated to senior leadership. Well-designed escalation procedures prevent bottlenecks while ensuring appropriate-level decision-making.

Stakeholder Feedback Loops

Formal feedback mechanisms (surveys, focus groups, one-on-ones) enable stakeholders to provide input on project progress and communication effectiveness. Acting on feedback demonstrates respect and improves engagement.

Executive Sponsorship

Strong executive sponsors actively champion projects, provide air cover when problems arise, and model organizational commitment. Projects with engaged executive sponsors succeed more frequently than projects lacking clear sponsorship.

Conclusion

Stakeholder management is not a peripheral project management activity; it is foundational to success. Projects with engaged, well-informed, respected stakeholders overcome technical challenges that derail poorly managed projects. Conversely, projects with excellent technical execution but poor stakeholder management deliver solutions nobody uses or wants.

Effective stakeholder management requires systematic approaches—identification, analysis, engagement strategy development, communication planning, expectation management, and continuous monitoring. It requires emotional intelligence, respect for different perspectives, and willingness to invest time in relationship-building. It requires transparency about challenges and partnership in problem-solving.

The investment in stakeholder management pays extraordinary dividends. Projects complete on time and on budget more frequently. Delivered solutions meet actual stakeholder needs. Stakeholders support solutions actively rather than merely tolerating them. Organizations build reputations for project delivery success, making future project execution easier. Most importantly, stakeholders trust project leaders to deliver, creating conditions where ambitious projects become possible.

Master stakeholder management, and you master project success. Neglect stakeholder management, and no amount of technical excellence saves your projects. The choice is clear.

References

1. KNUBA. (2025). Formalized Measurement by the Developer of the Stakeholder Readiness State to Fulfill Contractual Obligations in Construction Projects. Retrieved from http://mdcs.knuba.edu.ua/article/view/326747

2. Journal of Business and Social Management. (2024). Integrating Governance, Technical Controls, and Agile Practices: A Multi Layered Risk Management Framework for High Technology Projects. Retrieved from https://journal.idscipub.com/novatio/article/view/851

3. CARI Journals. (2025). The Influence of Stakeholder Involvement on the Performance of Housing Projects in Nairobi. Retrieved from https://carijournals.org/journals/index.php/JBSM/article/view/3136

4. Growing Science. (2024). Management Project Performance in Indonesia's Food Estate Development: A Stakeholder, Institutional, and Communication Perspective. Retrieved from http://www.growingscience.com/jpm/Vol10/jpm_2024_45.pdf

5. KL Alliance. (2025). Strategic Knowledge Management for Institutional Effectiveness in Construction Procurement: The Role of Stakeholder Inter-Communication. Retrieved from https://journals.klalliance.org/index.php/JKMP/article/view/539

6. arxiv.org. (2024). Unified External Stakeholder Engagement and Requirements Strategy. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.05019.pdf

7. PMI Indonesia. (2023). How You Manage Your Stakeholders Is The Key Driver To Success. Retrieved from https://pmi-indonesia.org/blog/how-you-manage-your-stakeholders-is-the-key-driver-to-success-20580

8. Atomic Object. (2025). Stakeholder Communication for Successful Software Projects. Retrieved from https://spin.atomicobject.com/stakeholder-communication-software/

9. Bellwether Greenville. (2025). Managing Stakeholder Expectations: The Key to Maximizing Project Success. Retrieved from https://bellwethergreenville.com/managing-stakeholder-expectations-the-key-to-maximizing-project-success/

10. Apriorit. (2025). Stakeholders in the Software Development Process. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stakeholders-software-development-process-apriorit-5sdee

11. IJERT. (2020). A Study on Stakeholder Management of an Engineering Project. Retrieved from https://www.ijert.org/research/a-study-on-stakeholder-management-of-an-engineering-project-IJERTV9IS060013.pdf

12. PLOS. (2022). Ten Simple Rules on How to Develop a Stakeholder Engagement Plan. Retrieved from https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010520

13. MDPI. (2021). Realizing the Need for Digital Transformation of Stakeholder Management: A Systematic Review in the Construction Industry. Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12690/pdf?version=1637116517

14. Technical Leaders. (2025). Ultimate Guide to Stakeholder Communication in Tech. Retrieved from https://www.technical-leaders.com/post/ultimate-guide-to-stakeholder-communication-in-tech

15. Cerri. (2024). Understanding Stakeholders: Key to Project Success. Retrieved from https://cerri.com/understanding-stakeholders-key-to-project-success/

16. LinkedIn. (2025). Mastering Stakeholder Management in 2025 – Strategies, Best Practices & Tools. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mastering-stakeholder-management-2025-strategies-best-singhal-csm--zk70c

17. EpicFlow. (2024). Managing Expectations in Project Management. Retrieved from https://www.epicflow.com/blog/dealing-with-unrealistic-expectations-in-project-management/

18. Science Publishing Group. (2025). The Effect of Stakeholder Management on Project Success. Retrieved from https://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/article/10.11648/j.ajetm.20251001.12

19. reVerb Communications. (2025). How to Handle Difficult Stakeholders. Retrieved from https://www.reverbcomms.ca/stakeholder-engagement-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/how-to-handle-difficult-stakeholders

20. DartAI. (2025). How to Deal with Difficult Stakeholders in Project Management. Retrieved from https://www.dartai.com/blog/deal-with-difficult-stakeholders-project-management