Stakeholder roles and responsibilities

• Reduces ambiguity: Clearly defined roles and responsibilities eliminate confusion about who is responsible for what, preventing overlaps, gaps or duplicated efforts.
• Enhances accountability: When each stakeholder knows their specific tasks and deliverables, it becomes easier to track progress and hold individuals accountable for their contributions.
• Supports effective decision-making: With clear roles, decision-making processes are streamlined, as stakeholders understand their authority and the information they need to contribute. 

• Facilitates communication: Knowing the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder allows for targeted communication, ensuring that information is delivered to the right people through the most appropriate channels. 
• Promotes collaboration: Clear roles foster a sense of teamwork and collaboration, as stakeholders understand how their work connects with others and how to work together effectively. 
• Reduces conflict: When roles are well-defined, there is less potential for conflict arising from misunderstandings about responsibilities. 

• Manages expectations: Defining roles helps manage stakeholder expectations by outlining what they can realistically expect from the project and from other stakeholders.
• Builds trust: When stakeholders feel heard, understood and valued, it builds trust and confidence in the project and the team.
• Increases buy-in: When stakeholders are actively involved and understand their role in the project, they are more likely to buy into the project's goals and contribute to its success. 

• Improves efficiency: Well-defined roles and responsibilities lead to a more efficient project workflow, as tasks are completed on time and within budget.
• Reduces risks: By identifying potential risks early on and assigning responsibility for mitigating them, the project is less likely to encounter unexpected problems.
• Better outcomes: Ultimately, clear stakeholder roles and responsibilities contribute to better project outcomes, delivering the desired results and meeting the needs of all stakeholders. 

People assigned with a task are responsible for developing and completing that project deliverable. These people are typically hands-on team members who make direct contributions toward the completion of the project. 

Examples of roles that will be directly responsible for deliverables include:

• project manager
• procurement officer
• subject-matter expert
• service designer.

If one person has been assigned too many tasks, they may struggle to manage their workload, leading to delays or burnout. To avoid this, project managers should use the RACI to ensure responsibilities are carefully distributed across the team. Regularly reviewing the matrix throughout the project helps identify and address any imbalances before they become critical.

Accountable people ensure accountability to project deadlines, and ultimately, accountability to project completion. This group frequently also falls under the informed category.

Some examples of accountable people are:

• product owners
• delegated financial authorities
• business owners
• sponsors
• Chief Procurement Officer.

By clearly defining roles, a RACI prevents decision-making bottlenecks and confusion in the approval process. When roles are ambiguous, critical decisions can get delayed, as team members might not know who holds final accountability. The RACI eliminates this issue by ensuring that the individual responsible for approvals is clearly designated as Accountable. Additionally, identifying who needs to be consulted or informed reduces unnecessary back-and-forth, allowing decisions to be made quickly and efficiently without roadblocks. This clear communication flow optimises project progression and prevents delays.

Consulted people’s opinions are crucial, and their feedback needs to be considered at every step. These people provide guidance that is often a prerequisite to other project tasks, for example, providing legal guidance on a project throughout the process. If you are working on new product development or expansion, this could include all users.

Some examples of consulted people are:

• legal experts
• information and cybersecurity risk experts
• probity advisors
• end users.

Informed people are those that need to stay in the loop of communication throughout the project. They do not have to be consulted or be a part of the decision-making, but they should be made aware of all project updates. Typically, these consists of business owners or stakeholders that are more interested in viewing the project at a very high level.  Keep this group on your CC list for awareness of topics, decisions and progress – that includes making them part of the initial project kick-off and project updates as optional attendees. 

Some examples of informed people are:

• ministers
• Steering Committee members
• business owners
• end users
• affected stakeholder groups.

Request access from the TBI advisory team to the RACI tool via MIRO and follow these steps to complete it as part of your team’s buying project planning process. 

1. Plan ahead before taking action: You will need a thorough understanding of the buying project and its demands before communicating with key stakeholders and decision-makers.
2. Make an action plan: List key activities, decisions and deliverables and what type of resource skills and roles would be needed for each.
3. Identify all people involved: Identify the people on the buying team, the expert community, end users and approvers.
4. Gather as a group: Hold review sessions with key members of the buying team to align on roles, and if you haven’t already, host a mobilisation meeting with your team and any other key stakeholders to review the matrix and address questions.

As a guide, refer to the RACI tool example below.

Take these steps to determine stakeholder interest and influence:

1. Identify each stakeholder: Consider both internal and external stakeholders and whether they are core, direct and indirect.
   • Core stakeholders: These are essential for the evaluation, delivery or viability of the product or service.  
   • Direct stakeholders: These are individuals or bodies who interact directly with the product or service and often have a visible role. They may be people or communities who use the service or are impacted by it.  
   • Indirect stakeholders: These are people or bodies who are otherwise affected by the the service. Indirect stakeholders are people whose interest may be enhanced or threatened. They may be more difficult to identify and engage with, however they may have an important role, either as supporters or, in putting up barriers to proposed courses of action.  
2. Request access from the TBI advisory team to the stakeholder influence and interest matrix tool via MIRO.
3. Plot their level of interest and influence: Add each stakeholder name to a quadrant of the stakeholder influence and interest matrix shown below.
4. Identify engagement activities that will meet stakeholder needs, guided by each quadrant –e.g. ‘inform completely’ or ‘minimal contact’.

As a guide, refer to the stakeholder influence and interest tool example below.

Allocate stakeholders to governance groups using the outputs from the RACI and stakeholder interest and influence activities.  

• Identify the project stakeholder groups needed for the project: e.g core buying team, subject-matter experts, governance, scoping workshops, document reviews, approvals, evaluation and testing.
• Determine the key responsibilities of each group.
• Determine which roles are needed for each group.
• Determine how, and how often, the groups will be engaged.

Request access from the TBI advisory team to a governance group allocation tool via MIRO.

Stakeholder management is a key aspect of project management planning methodologies. It’s important to identify the key buying project activities and detailed tasks so these can be effectively allocated and monitored.  

List the core project activities for an innovation procurement. For each activity noted in the project activities and responsibilities tool, identify the resource profile required and assign to a stakeholder identified in your completed RACI. 

As a guide, refer to the governance core responsibilities example below, which provides a starting point for the range of activities that will require resourcing.

Using the RACI outputs, identify the name of the resource and define the level of commitment expected for each core project activity.

The governance core responsibilities example below is illustrative only, and while it provides a starting point for the range of activities that require resourcing, it is not complete. Buying teams can also access a governance core responsibilities example via MIRO.

The columns in the example below represent the project team roles and the rows represent each task. This table is an indicative starting point. Buying teams should work together to tailor a RACI for their project.

This RACI is suitable when there are many activities, tasks and stakeholders to manage.  The columns in the example below represent who should be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed and the rows represents each activity. More granular tasks are listed beside each activity.

At the regular stand-up: 

• Each member should update the team on progress and blockers.  
• The stand-up should be used to communicate stakeholder engagement tasks.  
• Stakeholders required for activities should be engaged as early as possible.
• When core team members or key stakeholders change, hand-offs and briefings should be conducted to ensure the team maintains ways of working, understanding and momentum.

As a guide, refer to the stand-up example below, which provides a shortened set of activities and tasks. Buying teams can access a stand-up example via Miro.

Stand-up