Stakeholder analysis is a vital technique used to win over key people needed for your project/initiative success. You must develop strategies and tactics that weighs and balance all of the competing interests in the organization. Without this it is unlikely that you will come up with lasting solutions or even get your ideas implemented. Stakeholder’s main goals are to ensure that there is cooperation between each stakeholder and the project manager in order for ensure success and avoid disruptive conflicts.
Below we have provided two Stakeholder Analysis Tools to automate the steps needed to guarantee a rigorous and succeeful implementation of this technique. You can select whichever option you like better.
OPTION 1 – Stakeholder Analysis Tool
OPTION 2 – Stakeholder Analysis Tool
Stakeholder analysis in conflict resolution, project management, and business administration, is the process of the assessing a decision’s impact on relevant parties. This information is used to assess how the interests of those stakeholders should be addressed in a project plan, policy, program, or other action. Stakeholder analysis is a key part of stakeholder management. A stakeholder analysis does not preclude the interests of the stakeholders overriding the interests of the other stakeholders affected, but it ensures that all affected will be considered. Stakeholder analysis can be done once or on a regular basis to track changes in stakeholder attitudes over time.
Types of stakeholders include:
- Primary stakeholders: are those ultimately affected, either positively or negatively by an organization’s actions.
Secondary stakeholders: are the ‘intermediaries’, that is, persons or organizations who are indirectly affected by an organization’s actions. - Key stakeholders: who can also belong to the first two groups have significant influence upon or importance within an organization.
The first step in building any stakeholder map is to develop a categorised list of the members of the stakeholder community. Once the list is reasonably complete it is then possible to assign priorities in some way, and then to translate the ‘highest priority’ stakeholders into a table or a picture. The potential list of stakeholders for any project will always exceed both the time available for analysis and the capability of the mapping tool to sensibly display the results, the challenge is to focus on the ‘right stakeholders’ who are currently important and to use the tool to visualise this critical sub-set of the total community.
The most common presentation styles use a matrix to represent two dimensions of interest with frequently a third dimension shown by the colour or size of the symbol representing the individual stakeholders.
Some of the commonly used ‘dimensions’ include:
- Power (high, medium, low)
- Support (positive, neutral, negative)
- Influence (high or low)
- Need (strong, medium, weak)
