AbstractsEconomics

Materialization and Management of Emergent Requirements of Key Stakeholders

by Amma Serwah Boateng




Institution: Umeå University
Department:
Year: 2015
Keywords: stakeholder management; emergent requirements; requirements elicitation; change requests; stakeholder satisfaction; Social Sciences; Economics and Business; Business Administration; Samhällsvetenskap; Ekonomi och näringsliv; Företagsekonomi
Record ID: 1345777
Full text PDF: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-98646


Abstract

Stakeholder satisfaction has in the modern day, become an imperative criterion to achieve project success. Satisfaction of stakeholders’ requirements however is challenging because these requirements evolve as the project progresses. Previous research indicates that as stakeholders continuously interact with a project, they gain more information and new requirements or request for modifications are likely to emerge as a result of this increased intelligence.  Nonetheless, conventional project management elicits requirements from stakeholders at the onset of the project, and uses these pre-defined requests to design the project. This practice hinders the ability of stakeholders to influence the project as it advances, and ill equips managers to handle and implement stakeholder requirements that materialize at subsequent phases. It is therefore important to investigate how emergent requirements of stakeholders come about and how they are managed in practice.  The objective of this thesis is to answer the research question, “From the perspective of managers, in the Scandinavian management context, how do emergent requirements of key stakeholders materialize, and how are they managed?” by probing into the ways via which emergent requirement of stakeholders come about, and investigating how managers deal with these emergent requirement upon their occurrence.  This qualitative study was conducted in the Scandinavian region using semi-structured interviews. Five respondents in managerial positions of the Umeå wastewater treatment plant project participated in the research and data collected concerned materialization and management of emergent requirements that surfaced during different phases of the project. The resulting data was then analyzed with reference to previously established theoretical frameworks.  Results from this study confirm that, new or modified requirements and consequently, requests for changes do emerge at even the execution phase of projects, despite careful planning. These emergent requirements are traced to three different sources and are managed in different ways depending on the type of requirement, whether strategic and critical or minor.