“How to identify the right IT project stakeholders” on HPE.com, May 13, 2019.
Alan Zucker, founding principal at Project Management Essentials, learned the hard way to include production operations and technology support. “Once, we decommissioned an old accounting platform and replaced it with a shiny, brand new one” that promised to save lots of money and require less finance and technology support. One difference was that the old application ran the accounting at month end, but the new application closed the books every day. “No one had considered that production support costs were based on the number of processes executed, so the costs of running this application ballooned,” says Zucker.
…Certainly, you want to get input from everyone who can help—and avoid the rest. “The net of project stakeholders should be cast as wide as possible,” says Zucker. “Include everyone and all groups that you can think of. You can sort and prioritize requirements later.”