Before any project begins, you need to find the right people to take care of it. And, while working on it, you need the right people in your team. So, to identify project stakeholders, performing a stakeholder analysis is excellent.

Stakeholder mapping is critical to creating an effective and efficient project team that can achieve great results in many subjects.

The best thing about this analysis is that it shows how stakeholder expectations can be met before starting the project. How many of the potential issues can be solved by simple planning? It gives you a lot of advantages over others in the business. As you probably know, every successful project has its share of preparation, and yours is no exception.

So to combat all of those things, here are some tips on approaching stakeholder analysis to make the project scope unique!

Let’s dive into some details!

Before identifying stakeholders, you must determine what kind of software would be the best to ensure your project's success. To find the key project stakeholders, you’ll need some extensive weaponry.

As usual in those circumstances, the best solutions are the most obvious ones. For all office-related purposes - the best thing is Microsoft Office itself. It has all the necessary tools to combat problematic office issues and gives some additional opportunities to advance your office efficiency.

Here, at Royal CD Keys, we recommend using our Microsoft Office for a reasonable price offer. Traditionally, MS Office was considered to be an expense. Well, not nowadays. This key is a complete package with the latest versions of the popular package and comes at a very reasonable price for every user. You can get it only for yourself or multiple keys for your whole family. Everything is possible with this software.

But, getting back to the topic of our conversation. Let’s go through some MS Office templates for stakeholder analysis.

This is one of the most well-crafted templates you may come across and also - one of the most popular ones. There is everything you need to have on your stakeholder map. What should some of the participating stakeholders do, what are the project risks and possible accomplishments, who are the primary stakeholders, who are the internal stakeholders, who should be the project manager, and what is the project lifecycle? Those and many additional stakeholder strategies can be found in this handy template.

We highly recommend it and hope it will serve you well. You can download this template for free at SmartSheet.com.

But if you don’t need that many details in your stakeholder analysis - you can always count on the good old basic template that is this one. There are fewer details, but you can see that it is much more transparent. Everything is apparent, visually pleasing, and easy to understand.

We highly recommend this one for anyone wanting to learn more about their team but not too much, just the right amount. You can download this template for free at TemplateLab.com.

This one is something in between. As you can see, it has a lot of elements that can be considered a crossover between our first and second one but also - some additional elements.

The most important thing is that it’s the middle ground. As you can see, you have not only those basic questions like - name or position. There also is more in-depth information about the person's impact and influence over the project and other people.

It’s helpful in most situations, although - if you want something more advanced, you should probably find something more suited to your needs. You can download this template for free at Tools4Dev.org.

Stakeholder analysis is one of the crucial elements of any project that involves, well, anyone. In the most simple terms, it boils down to analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of potential team members to create a perfect match.

It’s an excellent tool for every manager because it shows you what you can do and some interconnections between parties. What are some pairs that should not go together? What is our company capable of doing? Do we need some external stakeholders? Who is the project sponsor?

Every team has many issues, and there is always too little time to answer them. That is why it’s best to be upfront with your analysis before any problems arise.

With so many stakeholder groups working together on the projects, there will undoubtedly be some ways of optimizing their efforts. And here comes the stakeholder analysis.

With that in mind, let’s get into some ways that you can use this tool to your benefit.

Finding the Key Stakeholders

Every team has some members who are necessary and some less so. With excellent stakeholder analysis, you can put the most optimized group to eliminate the overcrowding of talented individuals.

It’s the same as with football. You can create a team with four strikers, but you must know that it’s suboptimal. The question you may ask yourself would be - well, everything is excellent, but who’s going to pass the ball to them? And it turns out - you need the midfield as well!

It’s the same in the corporate environment. You need your “strikers” to organize and execute deals, but also - you need researchers, accountants, or graphic designers. Project managers know that, which is why they often use this tool. Remember - with too many leaders, there is no one to lead. With too many followers - there is no one to take charge. Be sure to allocate your resources responsibly.

Get Everyone on The Right Page

The other important aspect of stakeholder management is to get everyone involved in the project at the right moment. You probably don’t need some advanced graphic design if you don’t even have the basics of the idea going on.

Remember that you need to optimize your resources at every step. It will save time, the company’s resources, and just overall stakeholder interest. You will not have the most outstanding results if some of your stakeholders are put to no use for most of the project’s duration. 

You can get people into a team brainstorming session and find out if they’re even interested in doing the project with you. The more involved the stakeholders are, the better they will perform. Involving stakeholders at the early stages of the project is crucial, but you must get only those who are necessary. In other cases, you can get some negative stakeholders that are just a burden to your project.

Find Out Potential Problems

The worst thing about working with people is, indeed - working with people. At least for some of us. Getting everyone on the same page could be a stressor, and people can be pretty mean to each other in certain situations.

So, to best address this issue before it even happens, you should perform a stakeholder analysis to identify the risks of different stakeholders' interests.

You may think interpersonal issues are not as crucial in the corporate world, but you’d be mistaken. Creating a team that works great together and has a plan for everything is essential, and getting the right people to do it is necessary.

What to do, then? Well, you should consider what kind of issues could appear in this particular situation between people and how to use the strengths of each member in the best way possible. Everyone has a vested interest in the project’s outcome, so if you can address potential issues early on - you’d have the upper hand in the long run.

So, we know why we should do a stakeholder analysis but let’s find out how. It can be very complex or relatively simple, depending on what kind of project we are talking about, how many people are involved, and overall - what we are trying to accomplish.

The most important thing to start with is to determine the project’s goal and go down from there. Think about the outcome and add the best people you can get to make it happen. If you have an accounting project, go for the best ones in your company, the second best, the third, etc. When it comes to other key stakeholders - do the same. You can benefit from creating some in-depth analysis of your needs before getting into project management.

So, let’s go through some steps you can take to make it happen.

Find Your Stakeholders

The essential thing you should do is to find the people you want to work with. You can get it done by creating a list of everyone that should be involved and, as we’ve stated before, going back on every name and seeing what is possible.

The other thing you can do is to make sure that potential stakeholders are available for you. Some other internal stakeholders can get involved later in the process, but your core team needs to be ready to go from the start.

Group Your Stakeholders

The next thing you should do is group your key stakeholders and assign the importance of each one of them. Most managers use the power/interest grouping, and we recommend this one as it is the best way to get it done.

It means the amount of influence in the company and interest in your project. For example, some people can have some good fundamental skills and a substantial impact on the company, but they may not be that interested in your project or the other way around. Preferably, all of your stakeholders should be High/High, but as we know - it’s sometimes not possible. So - let’s find out the second-best thing!

High Power/High Interest

As we’ve stated before, this is the best scenario possible. You have great people with significant influence and excellent skills, and they want to get into your project. Those are your most important stakeholders, and you need to make them happy as they can be an asset in this and future projects. 

High Power/Low Interest

This is not the priority but also very important. They are not that interested in what you’re doing, but they have a lot of influence, so you must take care of them as best as possible. Their well-being can affect how you’re perceived and even jeopardize your project.

Low Power/High Interest

Take care of those people as they are eager to work with you, but you don’t need to go out of your way to make them happy. The best thing you can do is check on them daily, but as they are indeed interested in the project, they will be fine even without your oversight.

Low Power/Low Interest

You just need to inform them that something’s going on. Do not overdo telling them about the project’s progress; it will take time. Those stakeholders are not the key players, and they are not that interested in the project’s success, so keep your resources focused on other players.

Communicate with Your Stakeholders

After you group stakeholders, find the best way to communicate with everyone. Create a strategy, brainstorm together, and find out what they can do and how they can do it best. Figure out what motivates them, their priorities and how they can be an asset.

As you can see, stakeholder analysis is an integral part of creating a great team. If you want to make everything you can out of the project - this is the way to accomplish it. The best thing you can take away from this is that team is the most critical aspect of every project.

Getting the right people to do the right thing is more important than the technicalities and formalities you may encounter on your path. And by doing stakeholder analysis beforehand, you can quickly get ahead of the potential issues and create powerful connections.

We hope you found this helpful guide and if you have any additional questions - feel free to let us know!