What is a Stakeholder Analysis? How do you do one?

A Stakeholder Analysis is when you find out who has an interest in your project or can affect it. Then you figure out how powerful they have what they are interested in and what they expect. The goal is simple: you want to know who is important, why they are important and how to work with them throughout the project.

Step 1: Find Your Stakeholders

Start by thinking about everyone who might be affected by your project. Stakeholders are not just the people like your sponsor or client. They can be anyone who is affected by or can affect the project.

There are kinds of stakeholders:

• Internal stakeholders: people who work on the project like the project sponsor, team members and other department heads

• External stakeholders: people outside the project like customers, users, vendors and partners

• Indirect stakeholders: people who might not be directly involved but can still affect the project, like competitors or industry analysts

Step 2: Figure Out Who Has Power and Interest

Once you have a list of stakeholders you can use a grid to figure out who has power and interest. This grid helps you decide who to focus on.

There are four kinds of stakeholders:

• People with a lot of power and interest: you need to work with them like the project sponsor

• People with a lot of power but not much interest: you need to keep them happy but you do not need to talk to them all the time like senior executives

• People with a lot of interest but not much power: you need to keep them informed but they cannot make big decisions like users

• People with not much power or interest: you just need to check in with them occasionally like people who are not directly involved in the project

Step 3: Understand What Stakeholders Want and Care About

For each stakeholder you need to ask:

• What do they think success looks like?

• What are they worried about?

• How do they want to get updates?

• What might make them not like the project?

Step 4: Make a Plan to Work with Stakeholders

Based on what you learned you can make a plan to communicate with each group of stakeholders.

You need to decide:

• How to update them

• What format to use, like reports or meetings

• How to send them information, like email or in person

• How much detail to give them

Step 5: Keep Checking and Updating

Stakeholders and their interests can change throughout the project. Yo u need to check in with them to make sure your plan is still working.

How do you get started?

You do not need software. A simple spreadsheet or a grid on a whiteboard can work. Some platforms like Gururo (https://gururo.com) can help you learn about stakeholder management. A Stakeholder Analysis helps you turn vague ideas about stakeholders into a clear plan. If you take the time to do it right you will avoid a lot of problems.