E058 Stakeholder Communication and Collaboration, catalog number PJMG 2115, is the three-competency-unit course where WGU asks you to build a communications strategy that a real project team could run without you in the room. The deliverable is usually an analysis of who has a stake in the project, followed by a plan that says what each group receives, in what form, how often and from whom. The scoring hinges on operability. A plan that reads as good intentions about keeping everyone informed is the standard return in this course.
What PJMG 2115 is actually testing
Stakeholder analysis is not a contact list. The scored skill is differentiation: recognizing that a project sponsor, a department head whose staff will change how they work, a regulator and an end user all need different information at different intervals for different reasons. A plan that gives everybody the weekly status report is a plan that has done no analysis at all, and evaluators identify it instantly because every row of the table looks the same.
Two dimensions do most of the analytical work. One is influence, meaning how much a stakeholder can affect the project's direction or resources. The other is interest, meaning how much the project's outcome affects them. Those two dimensions produce four quite different postures. Somebody with high influence and low interest needs short, infrequent, decision-focused contact and will resent anything longer. Somebody with low influence and high interest needs regular reassurance and detail, and starves without it. Getting those postures right, in writing, with reasons, is most of the course.
The collaboration half tests something quieter: whether you can plan for disagreement. Projects generate conflicts between stakeholders whose interests genuinely differ, and a communications plan that assumes goodwill has no mechanism for what happens when the operations manager and the finance director want opposite things. Naming the likely tension and stating how it gets surfaced and resolved is what turns an information plan into a collaboration plan.
Building the section plan from the rubric
WGU keeps the scoring detail in your Course of Study rather than the public catalog. Open it and count aspects before drafting. Each aspect is scored on its own against a three-point scale, a 2 in each one passes the task, and no aspect subsidizes another. In a communications deliverable this usually means the analysis and the plan are scored separately, so a strong matrix with a thin plan fails as reliably as the reverse.
If your course uses a performance assessment, give each scored aspect its own heading using the rubric's own nouns. Communications work tempts students to organize by stakeholder, which scatters each aspect's evidence across a dozen short paragraphs and makes the analytical aspects look unanswered.
The word budget, worked. Take five scored aspects and directions calling for roughly 1,700 words alongside any table. Give 130 words to naming the project and the boundary of the stakeholder set, and 120 to a closing note on how the plan gets updated as the project moves through phases. That leaves about 1,450 across five aspects, or 290 each. Then rebalance deliberately: the aspect asking you to justify why each group receives what it receives usually deserves 400, while the aspect asking you to identify stakeholders rarely needs more than 180 once the table does the listing.
Keep the table out of the word count in your own planning. Tables communicate structure efficiently, but rubric aspects are almost always scored on the reasoning around them. If a section is nothing but a table, treat that aspect as unanswered until you have written the paragraph that explains it.
A structure that fits a communications plan
Communications deliverables usually pair a stakeholder analysis with a plan matrix and a written rationale. Where your task directions dictate the format, follow them exactly. Where they do not, this arrangement puts the reasoning where an evaluator can score it.
| Section | What belongs in it | How it tends to be scored |
|---|---|---|
| Project and context | The project, its phase, and why communication matters here specifically | Short, but it anchors every later judgment |
| Stakeholder identification | Individuals and groups, internal and external, with their role | Scored for coverage, especially of external and indirectly affected parties |
| Influence and interest analysis | Where each stakeholder sits on both dimensions, and why | The reasoning aspect; placements without justification score thin |
| Engagement posture | The management approach implied by each placement | Scored for differentiation across quadrants |
| Communications matrix | Audience, message, channel, frequency, sender, feedback route | Checked for completeness of every row and for varied frequency |
| Collaboration and conflict | Predicted tensions and the mechanism for resolving them | Frequently omitted and frequently scored |
| Sources | Any model or standard you used, in APA | Scored where the rubric names citation |
Include a feedback route in the matrix. Communication planned in one direction is broadcasting, and the collaboration half of the course expects a named path for stakeholders to raise concerns and get answers.
Evidence craft in a stakeholder deliverable
Most of your evidence here is inference from a scenario, which makes visible reasoning the substitute for citation in much of the document.
- Justify each placement with a scenario fact. High influence because this person controls the budget line, not high influence because they are senior.
- Say what each stakeholder wants to know, not just that they should be kept informed. The message column is where analysis shows.
- Match channel to urgency and formality. A regulator does not get a chat message and a floor supervisor does not need a formal report.
- Vary frequency with reasons. If everybody is weekly, no analysis has been done.
- Cite the model you use for the analysis in APA where the rubric asks for citation, and apply it rather than describing it.
- Keep external stakeholders in view. Suppliers, customers, regulators and community groups get forgotten and are often specifically checked.
The habit that lifts these submissions is writing one sentence per stakeholder about what happens if you communicate badly with them. That single line converts a planning table into a risk-aware document and gives the collaboration aspect something concrete to sit on.
What separates Competent from a returned communications task
Outcomes at WGU are Competent or Not Competent, with no letter grades and no ordinary grade point average. Performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted without a grade penalty, so a return is a scheduling problem inside a six-month flat-rate term rather than a permanent mark against you.
Communications plans that clear on the first read share these features:
- The stakeholder set includes parties outside the project team and outside the organization.
- Every influence and interest placement carries a stated reason drawn from the scenario.
- The matrix shows genuinely different frequencies, channels and message content across rows.
- Each row names a specific sender rather than assigning everything to the project manager.
- A feedback mechanism exists and is described well enough that someone could use it.
- At least one predictable conflict is named, with a resolution route attached.
Where your plan includes a proctored objective assessment for this course, the boundary holds without exception. Proctored exams are yours to sit. Support means drilled terminology, practice questions, a study plan and a straight readiness verdict. We do not sit assessments and we never ask for portal credentials.
Six mistakes that cost time in E058
- One communication approach for everybody. Identical rows across the matrix prove that no analysis happened, whatever the surrounding prose claims.
- Confusing seniority with influence. Influence is control over the project's resources or decisions. A senior figure with no stake in this work may have very little.
- Leaving out external stakeholders. Customers, suppliers and regulators sit inside most scenarios and outside most student drafts.
- Planning outbound only. Without a feedback route, the plan cannot support collaboration and half the course title goes unanswered.
- Describing a stakeholder model instead of using it. A paragraph explaining a grid earns nothing. Placing this project's people on it earns the aspect.
- Ignoring conflict. Every project has stakeholders whose interests collide. Naming one and handling it is quick and frequently scored.
How support works on this course
Communications tasks fail on sameness, and sameness is easy to see from outside. Send the rubric from your Course of Study, the task directions and the scenario, and the work comes back with each placement justified from scenario facts, the matrix differentiated row by row, senders pushed onto the people who should actually be speaking, and a conflict section written where most drafts have none.
The part that carries forward is the influence and interest habit. E059 through E062 all assume you can say who cares about a decision and why, and doing that analysis properly once makes the rest of the sequence noticeably quicker.
Questions students ask about E058
Is E058 the same course as PJMG 2115?
How many stakeholders should I include?
Does the communications matrix have to be a table?
Every row of your matrix looking the same?
Send the rubric, the task directions and your draft. Placements get justified from scenario facts, the matrix gets differentiated row by row, and a conflict section gets written.
Where E058 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.