BUS605: Strategic Project Management

The stakeholders were identified by using snowball sampling. This is a technique where the existing study subjects provide the names of the other representatives who will fulfill the research criteria. The researcher approaches these representatives and asks them to participate. Each one who agrees is then asked to provide additional names. The process continues for as many times as needed until saturation is reached; therefore, the sample group appears to grow like a rolling snowball. Basically, the process continues until no new representatives or information appears.

In the case project, 13 different stakeholders (individuals or groups) were identified by using snowball sampling. Because there were other authorities or bureaus that did not have any role in this project and the competitors of the main contractor were not connected with the project at all, it was decided to exclude those two from the analysis of the results.

After the snowball sampling, eight face-face interviews of the identified stakeholders were performed. In the last two interviews, no new information appeared, so it was presumed that interviewing the remaining stakeholders would not provide new information either. Therefore, eight interviews were considered to be an adequate number. In addition, the plans and the whole project were still in an embryonic stage, and hence, all of the identified stakeholders were not known and thus could not be interviewed. One interview per stakeholder was performed, except for the customer, where the chairman of the board and one shareholder were interviewed. Thus, a better understanding of the project and the customer's attitudes towards the project was believed to be reached.

Figure 4 illustrates the identified stakeholders of the case project. The green circle means that a representative of that stakeholder was interviewed. The red circle means that a representative was not interviewed. The reason for this was that those representatives were not known yet. The arrows illustrate that the interviewee mentioned a stakeholder who was not mentioned in the previous interviews. While interviewing the neighbors' representative, it turned out that he was also a construction consultant, and therefore, he could answer questions from that point of view as well. The dashed line illustrates this connection.

Figure 4 The case project's stakeholders and interviewees.