...
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 (an example) 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.
...
There are plenty of practitioner-oriented resources to draw on. One recent paper on planning and carrying out these external activities presents a "stakeholder circe" framework you may find helpful: Achieving a Successful Engagement. A much simpler framing in Making Sense of Stakeholder Mapping justs 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.
...