This is a working page presenting resources for my students, by Anjali Sastry
An important part of any project is figuring out who else to talk to, to work with, to learn from, and to collaborate with.
As you kick off your project, a real challenge is balancing your investment in mapping, understanding, and interacting with stakeholders with all the other important components of your project. You don't want to spend all your time talking to people!
That said, project managers and participants often underinvest in this external activity. The work on X-Teams (page to come) and in other domains, especially project management, presents evidence on the importance of this part of your project work, because not only can it help your results to gain acceptance, but the information you gather and relationships you build can help you get your project work done better and faster. It can change the course of your project and dramatically alter the amount and type of work you envision for your project at its outset. So understanding your stakeholders is important not only to gain acceptance, but also because you can learn new things, build on others' work, coordinate tasks, and otherwise leverage your project work.
The practical: Key steps
How does this apply to your project, in practical terms? To get going, you'll want to list the people and groups that you think matter to your project, and then analyze what you know of each in order to come up with a plan for approaching them and building relationships. You will need to document what you are doing: list your prioritized list of stakeholders and note who you are targeting and a few words on why; also list who you are not placing at the top of the list, and why. Such notes can be invaluable during your project "post-mortem."
The tool
Now, for the actual mapping of stakeholders. Where to start? I've gathered a few resources. Tools for analyzing stakeholders abound: checklists, excel spreadsheets, etc. And, of course, there many assumptions built into such tools and frameworks (often unstated). We'll want to at least touch on some of these issues in a future discussion. But for now, you are going to learn by doing--so give stakeholder mapping a try!
Off-the-shelf frameworks
There are plenty of practitioner-oriented resources to draw on. One recent paper on planning and carrying out these external activities presents a "stakeholder circle" framework you may find helpful: Achieving a Successful Engagement. A much simpler framing in Making Sense of Stakeholder Mapping just lists types of stakeholders. From the world of information technology come many potentially useful tools. Consider this detailed overview, Project Clarity through Stakeholder Analysis, which explains the rationale behind the proposed approach. Note that you can click on each image to see it more clearly. This piece should give you a sense of how stakeholder analysis is used in projects.
For a ready-to-use tool, here's an interactive framework: Stakeholder Analysis Worksheet from IT Toolkit. A similar worksheet, Stakeholder Mapping, from ChangingMinds.org also shows some links to a simple model of change that may be useful for you.
If you'd like to learn about the work behind one of these tools, consider this (project management stakeholder tool and its underlying rationale).
Building your own framework
Here are some recommendations from a comprehensive manual I found on a Wold Bank tools website, called Guidelines for Conducting a Stakeholder Analysis. Following the author's suggestions, you'll want to adapt it to your needs by first defining, as a team, what stakeholder information or characteristics are most important to take into account. Consider the following characteristics as potential starting point, but tailor it for your project.
For each stakeholder, list or assess:
• name, position and organization
• internal/external to the organization implementing the change,
• knowledge of the change,
• position on the change,
• interest,
• alliances,
• resources,
• power, and
• leadership.
A review of the literature and others' experiences suggests that these characteristics are key:
Stakeholder knowledge level is important in identifying stakeholders who may oppose your ideas due to misunderstandings or lack of communication.
The stakeholder's position on the policy or idea is key to establishing whether or not he or she will block its implementation.
Determining the stakeholder's vested interests in the policy or idea will help your team better understand the stakeholder's position and possible ways to address his or her concerns.
Identifying possible stakeholder alliances is important because alliances can make a weak stakeholder stronger, or provide a way to influence several stakeholders by dealing with one key stakeholder.
The amount of and ability to mobilize resources is an important characteristic. You may even attempt to measure their power (see source), helpful in anticipating with what force the stakeholder might support or oppose the idea.
Finally, establishing whether or not the stakeholder has leadership will help you target those stakeholders who will be more likely to actually demonstrate their position for or against the change you're promoting (and convince others to do so).
As a team, look over, discuss, and adapt these characteristics and definitions with respect to your particular project and setting. As you'll be approaching different people individually, it's important for each team member to understand how you've defined every characteristic. Then, create a stakeholder analysis table in a word processing application or in a spreadsheet and fill it in—and update it—as you go.
Source for this section: Schmeer, Kammi. 1999. Guidelines for Conducting a Stakeholder Analysis. November 1999. Bethesda, MD: Partnerships for Health Reform, Abt Associates Inc. Accessed September 2007 at http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/99169/CD_CC/precourse/CCFY04CDRom/Week2/4Thursday/S2EngagingStakeholders/Guidelinesforstakeholderanalysis.pdf