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A Stakeholder Analysis

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Oluwafemi Abiodun
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12 views

A Stakeholder Analysis

Uploaded by

Oluwafemi Abiodun
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A stakeholder analysis is a project management tool used to identify the project’s stakeholders, issues they

care about and how they will be impacted by the project. Creating a stakeholder analysis will outline the
essential people you need to communicate with about the progress and scope of the project, the topics you
need to keep them informed about as the project progresses and how often you should speak to each
stakeholder. In this article, we cover what is a stakeholder analysis, how to conduct one and why it’s
important.
What Is a Stakeholder Analysis?
The stakeholder analysis is conducted at the beginning of a project to better understand the need of each
stakeholder and their primary requirements. A stakeholder includes any person or group the project will
impact, including investors, advisors, sponsors, team members and current or future customers.

Purpose of a Stakeholder Analysis


The purpose of a stakeholder analysis is to outline the key stakeholders and their needs at the start of the
project. It is important to have a clear understanding of each stakeholder and what they expect, especially
because stakeholders’ needs and expectations may collide with each other or with the project’s core
requirements.

How To Do a Stakeholder Analysis?


Conducting a stakeholder analysis starts with gathering enough information to understand each
stakeholder’s needs, according to Chris Mattmann, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer (CTIO) at
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Typically, the designers on the team would interview each of the
stakeholders to understand their processes, needs, limitations and interests.

To illustrate this, Mattmann outlined a hypothetical project to measure and create a map of the water in the
western United States. This would involve many different systems and teams, such as people to conduct
field experiments, and equipment like airplanes, towers and satellites. To conduct the stakeholder analysis,
the design team would interview each stakeholder, whether that be the sponsors, the data providers, the IT
team or the project developers.

After collecting this raw data from interviews, the team would review the information from these
discussions and start interpreting it. This is when the team might lay out a lot of sticky notes on the wall
and start grouping them by requirement or, alternatively, use a software tool to outline the raw data.
Essentially, the idea is to identify trends and possible points of conflict between the information each
stakeholder shared in the interview.

“Part of stakeholder analysis is to do the interviews, design work, brainstorming, and then to map the results
of that against your core requirements defined by the sponsors of the project and see if we can build them,”
Mattmann explained. Once you compare the different feedback from stakeholders, you may find it doesn’t
match up to the core requirements of the project. This might mean readjusting the project scope or
reevaluating the direction of the project, but a stakeholder analysis will allow you to figure this out before
the project begins.

How To Conduct a Stakeholder Map


A stakeholder map will allow you to visually interpret how often you need to stay in contact with each
stakeholder, how closely you should manage them and how to keep them satisfied and/or informed. To
create a stakeholder map, you would define a few important dimensions, then build quadrants for the
dimensions you want to optimize and group the stakeholder in that map, Mattmann explained.

For example, you might choose to categorize the stakeholders by importance and influence. A chart might
look something like this:

Once you determine where each stakeholder falls on the table, you’ll be able to determine how you
communicate with each stakeholder.

“You want your most important stakeholders to be the most interested in your project,” Mattmann
explained. That may mean keeping daily communication with them. “You don’t ever want to let their
interest wane because they’re the most important people,” he said.
On the other hand, it may not be as high of a priority to communicate regularly with the stakeholders who
have less influence or are going to be less impacted by the project. For these stakeholders, “you might not
care if their interest in the project is low because they’re not the most important stakeholders and they’re
not going to add a ton of value based on their influence,” Mattmann added.

For example, in the initial example of the map to measure the water levels in the western U.S., a stakeholder
analysis might outline how to communicate with the project’s data providers. “What we should do is keep
them informed, but we don’t have to have day-to-day contact with them,” Mattmann explained. “That way,
we’re managing our stakeholders not because they’re the most influential—they’re not the ones that are
giving us the most money—but they do have a lot of interest in getting their data out there,” he added.

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