There have been several opportunities for me to relocate throughout my career, some great locations and others, not so great. As I do not only have myself to think about but also other important stakeholders that my decision may impact either positively and or negatively. I have always been an over thinker when it comes to these moves, ultimately my final decision usually consist of the moves affect family and their support systems as they are mine.

The best validation tool that I would use in such a scenario is the stakeholder management tool. Emerald Works Limited, (n.d.) explains that stakeholder management is the process by which you identify key stakeholders and win their support. Stakeholder analysis is the first step in stakeholder management. There are three steps involved in stakeholder analysis; identifying stakeholders, prioritizing stakeholders, and understanding key stakeholders.

For the scenario above, my stakeholders would include my family i.e. my children and my spouse. As far as prioritizing, each would fall into different categories. For my 4 year old, she is close to home and only need be monitored and is classified as low power, less interested per the power/interest grid. My eldest daughter who is 15 years old, would be considered somewhere between high power, highly interested and high power, less interested. This is mainly because of her age and where she is at in the development stage from girl to young woman. On the other hand, although my son is close in age to my eldest, he would be considered low power, highly interested, he falls into this classification, because he is a homebody and is not so much concerned with socializing with friends if it is not via a game chat, or some form of social media, as a result of this he remains flexible and only need be informed. My wife would most certainly be classified as high power, highly interested because if "Mama ain't happy, nobody's happy".

Understanding the key stakeholders would involve gaining a better understanding of how and where my children are at in the school year, the relationships they have made with friends and acquaintances, their mental health as a result of the move, and their ability to appropriately adjust after said move. How my wife feels about the move, her excitement, or lack thereof toward the move, and her ability to adjust to the move, also contribute to gaining a better understanding of my stakeholders

References:

Emerald Works Limited. (n.d.-d).Stakeholder analysis: Winning support for your projects. MindTools.

Respond to your colleagues' posts in one or more of the following ways:

• Ask a question about or relate your own experiences to the scenario your colleague described.
• Offer an insight you gained from your colleague's proposal of which validation tool would support the best results if applied to their scenario.
• Provide an alternate suggestion, along with a rationale, of how another validation tool could be applied effectively to your colleague's scenario.