3.6. Manage Stakeholder Expectations
💡 First Principle: This task extends alignment into ongoing monitoring — internal and external customer satisfaction isn't assessed once and assumed stable; it's tracked continuously and responded to as it shifts.
Enablers: identify internal and external customer expectations, align and maintain outcomes to those expectations, and monitor internal/external customer satisfaction and respond as needed.
The internal/external customer distinction matters: an internal customer (e.g., another department depending on your deliverable) and an external customer (e.g., a paying client) can have divergent — sometimes conflicting — expectations from the same project, and the PM is expected to actively reconcile both, not favor one by default.
⚠️ Exam Trap: Assuming the external (paying) customer's expectations always take precedence over internal stakeholders'. PMI's scenarios often test whether you recognize an internal stakeholder's legitimate, unaddressed expectation as the actual root cause of a described problem.
