If you're on a Galaxy Fold, consider unfolding your phone or viewing it in full screen to best optimize your experience.
One of the most important project manager responsibilities is to make sure you have all of the stakeholders taken care of. It's one of the basics of project management that is necessary to get right at the very beginning, or you risk chaos and delays when it's too late to change course.
It’s one of the most preliminary steps you should be taking -- even before defining the project scope. A well-thought-out stakeholder analysis will inform all aspects of the project, so it’s important to get started with it right away.
A stakeholder analysis is a process that assesses a project and what factors may have an impact on the people with an interest in or influence over the project (the stakeholders).
The purpose of a stakeholder analysis in project planning is to identify who the key stakeholders are, and then determine how their interests should be addressed in the project plan.
These different stakeholders all have their own demands and interests, and determining how those different interests will be balanced is a key part of stakeholder analysis.
This analysis is vital before the start of a project, because it helps you spot risks and obstacles before the project gets underway. By keeping all of the stakeholders' interests in mind and making sure they are accounted for, you dramatically increase your project's chances of success.
The stakeholder analysis is actually a pretty straightforward process -- and it’s a key project management step. There’s nothing particularly complex about it, but it can give real clarity about who the stakeholders are and which of them are most important for you to take care of.
The first stakeholder analysis step in project management is to identify who the stakeholders are, after which you can start to get into the nitty-gritty of who has what interests, and what level of influence they have.
At this stage, you shouldn't really be concerned with just how involved they are in the project -- if they have any stake at all, list them. Anyone with a vested interest in this project or with influence over it, no matter how small that influence or interest is, is a stakeholder.
This is an important step because if you forget a stakeholder, it could throw your entire project off because you made a decision that negatively impacted a stakeholder you didn’t think of and now you need to adjust. Here’s a couple tips to make sure you identify everyone:
Of course, not all stakeholders are on equal footing, and there are two main factors to consider here: level of interest and level of influence.
We'll start with level of interest, which refers to how invested that individual stakeholder is in your project and how much they will be affected by the success or failure of the project.
You’ll want to estimate what each stakeholder’s level of interest is, perhaps simply tagging them as "low" or "high" or using a numbered scale for more specificity.
By ascertaining the level of interest a stakeholder has in the project, you will have one half of the puzzle in how each stakeholder’s concern should be prioritized. Here are three tips for figuring out their level of interest:
Interest is not the only factor, however. There are people and entities who have no interest in your project but a high degree of influence. One example might be the government.
If you're working on a construction project, the government probably has little interest in its outcome but expects you to abide by all laws and regulations.
Any misstep by you, and the government could shut the entire project down, meaning it has a high degree of influence but little interest. Therefore, you'd need to factor it into your stakeholder analysis.
This can also be useful for your workload management, as it helps you identify who has a big impact on the project and should therefore take on higher-priority tasks.
When you determine the level of influence of your stakeholders, you will have the complete picture to proceed to the analysis phase. Here’s some tips on how to get there:
Now that you understand who the stakeholders are, what their interests are, and how much influence they have on the project, you can start balancing and prioritizing their needs.
Stakeholders with a high interest and high influence in the project should get first priority, and those with the lowest interest and lowest influence should get last priority.
This may seem obvious, but until you lay it out in an analysis, you may find yourself wasting time catering to the needs of one stakeholder who you didn't realize was low interest and low influence at the expense of someone who really matters on the project.
You might also find it valuable to create a risk register, which is a document that lays out what risks are associated with which activities, and which stakeholder has ownership of that activity. This is a way to further build off your analysis to create a comprehensive risk management plan.
Now that you’ve laid the groundwork in the previous three steps, the analysis should be fairly straightforward. Here’s some things to keep in mind when you do it:
To truly illustrate what it means to conduct a stakeholder analysis, it’s helpful to look at what a finished product looks like to give you some ideas on how to conduct yours and what information you will need to gather.
Here’s a quick mock-up of what a simplified stakeholder analysis might look like for a small construction firm tasked with developing a one-story building.
As you can see, it’s not extraordinarily complicated, but it does give a clear picture of who your stakeholders are, what their priority should be, and how often you should be communicating with them.
The Ascent has reviewed a lot of project management software options that can help you better manage stakeholders (and the project in general).
As a result, it may make sense to try a few out of them to see if you can do a better job of drafting a project communication plan that will serve the needs of all of your stakeholders.
In addition to helping with stakeholder analysis, these software options have many other essential project management tools -- such as task prioritization, team calendars, resource management, time tracking, and more. Take a look and see what might be a good fit for your business.
Our Small Business Expert
We're firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.