A Stakeholder is any party who may have an interest in an organization’s activity or could be affected by its outcomes. Stakeholders can be any internal or external individuals, groups, departments, business units, or organizations. Primary stakeholders are those who are part of the economic transactions of the business, while secondary stakeholders are those who are affected by or can affect the business in someway.

Stakeholder analysis is the process of identifying and analyzing the stakeholders that are likely to affect or be affected by a particular project or other organizational activity. It can be done once in a while or on a regular basis to track the attitudes and behaviors of stakeholders over time. Stakeholder analysis is widely used in project management, conflict resolution, organizational transformation and change management.

In project management, stakeholder analysis is used to develop engagement and cooperation between project team and project stakeholders. This will lead to less conflict and more cooperation during the implementation of the project. It helps to identify the people who need to be engaged, consulted or informed about the project activities and issues. Additionally, it will help to identify other people who could impact or be impacted by the project outcome in a positive or negative way.

The first step is to identify the stakeholders of the project. Start by brainstorming and listing the individuals and groups who may have a stake in the project. Once you have developed a list of stakeholders, you need to group them into logical categories such as external stakeholders, process team, senior managers, etc. Affinity mapping can be used to organize and make sense of the various stakeholder groups.

Power-Interest Matrix

One of the most widely used tools for analyzing stakeholders is the power-interest matrix. It is a four-field matrix that classifies stakeholders into four groups according to the power they hold and whether they are interested in the project or not. There are four groups of stakeholders according to the power-interest matrix, which are key players, context setters, defenders and crowd.

Now that you have an idea about the level of involvement each stakeholder has, gaps between the current and the desired involvement levels shall be identified, and actions required to close those gaps shall be implemented. You may use the following involvement planning worksheet to assess where stakeholders are now as well as where they need to be in terms of project involvement.

The last step is to create a communication plan to send the right message to the right stakeholder at the right time. The plan should provide information such as the person who is going to communicate with each stakeholder, the key message that needs to be communicated, and the communication method to be used (e.g. informal chat, invite to team meetings, emails, etc.). You may use the following worksheet to plan your communication actions.