Identify Stakeholder is the process of regularly identification of key stakeholders in a project and analysis and collecting and writing down information about their interests, participation, interdependencies, influence, and possible effect on the project’s success. The best thing about this process is that it helps the project team figure out what stakeholders (or groups of stakeholders) need to be involved with. During the job, this process is done as needed at different times. Figure below shows the process’s sources, how it works, and what it produces.
This step is often taken for the first time in a project, either before or at the same time as the project charter is made and accepted. You should do it at the beginning of each phase and whenever there is a big change in the project or the company. The project management plan and project documents should be looked at each time the identification process is repeated to find the right project key stakeholders.
Identify Stakeholders: Inputs
Project Charter
The list of key stakeholders is in the project Charter . It might also have details about what every individual is responsible for.
Business Documents
The business case and the benefits management plan are used in the first step of the Identify Stakeholders process to find out about the players involved in the project.
Business case
The business case lists the primary stakeholders that the project will affect and the project’s goals.
Benefits management plan
The benefits management plan lays out how the benefits mentioned in the business case are supposed to be achieved. As a result, it may help to figure out which people and groups will gain from the project’s results and are therefore stakeholders.
Project Management Plan
When figuring out who the stakeholders are for the project, the project management plan is not available. But once it has been made, the project management plan includes, but is not limited to:
Communications management plan
There is a strong link between communications and involving stakeholders. The Communications management plan has information about the people who have a role in the project.
Stakeholder engagement plan
According to the stakeholder engagement plan, management must use certain tactics and take certain actions in order to effectively stakeholder identification and analysis .
Project Documents
The first step in figuring out who the stakeholders are probably won’t use any project documents. But identifying stakeholders happens all the way through the project. It’s easier to find and use more documents once the project is past the “startup” part. It’s possible to use the following project documents as inputs for identification of key stakeholders in a project :
Change log.
There may be a new stakeholder or a change in the way a current stakeholder is involved with the project in the change log.
Issue log
One of the things that the issue log does is keep track of problems that might bring in new stakeholders or change how current stakeholders participate.
Requirements documentation
Requirements can give you information about possible Stakeholders.
Agreements
Stakeholders in a project are the people who sign a deal. There may be references to other parties in the agreement.
Enterprise Environmental Factors
The following Enterprise Environmental Factors can affect the Identify Stakeholders process:
- The political climate, organizational mindset, and governance framework
- Standards established by the government or an industry, such as rules, product standards, and codes of conduct;
- Trends and habits that are global, regional, or local; and
- Geographic distribution of facilities and resources.
Organizational Process Assets
The following organizational process assets can have an effect on the identification of key stakeholders in a project :
- Stakeholder register templates and instructions,
- Stakeholder registers from previous projects, and
- Lessons learned repository with information about the preferences, actions, and involvement of stakeholders.
Identify Stakeholders: Tools And Techniques
Expert Judgment
You should look at the information and experience of people or groups who are experts in the following areas:
- Being aware of the organization’s rules and power structures,
- Knowledge of the organization’s culture and environment, as well as those of other organizations that are influenced, such as customers and the environment as a whole,
- Knowing about the business or type of project outcome, and
- Knowing what each team member brings to the table and how they do it.
Data Gathering
For stakeholder identification and analysis process, you can use the following data-gathering methods, but they are not limited to them:
Questionnaires and surveys
One-on-one reviews, focus group meetings, and other ways to gather a lot of information can be part of questionnaires and surveys.
Brainstorming
When used to find shareholders using brainstorming .
Data Analysis
For identification of key stakeholders in a project , you can use data analysis methods such as, but not limited to:
Stakeholder analysis
After doing a stakeholder analysis, you will have a list of all the people who have an interest in the project, along with information about their jobs on the project, their “stakes,” their expectations, their attitudes (how much they support the project), and how interested they are in learning more about it. People who have a stake in something can have any of the following, but not just those:
- Interest
- Rights
- Ownership
- Knowledge.
- Contribution
Document analysis.
Examining the project documents that is already available and the lessons learned from past projects in order to find information about identification of stakeholders and other supporting documents.
Data Representation
For stakeholder identification and analysis process, stakeholder mapping or modeling is one way to show data, but it’s not the only one that can be used. There are different ways to group stakeholders into groups that are called “stakeholder mapping and representation.” Organizing stakeholders into groups helps the team build relationships with the project stakeholders that have been found. The following are common methods:
Power/interest grid, power/influence grid, or impact/influence grid.
Each of these methods helps put stakeholders into groups based on their amount of authority (power), interest in the project’s outcomes, ability to change the project’s outcomes (influence), or ability to improve its planning or execution. These models for grouping things into categories can help with small projects or projects where stakeholders have simple connections with each other or with the project itself.
Stakeholder cube
This makes the grid models we talked about earlier better. This model turns the grid parts into a three-dimensional model that project managers and teams can use to find their stakeholders and get them involved. Additionally, it gives a model with many dimensions that makes the stakeholder group look more like a real person and helps with the creation of communication plans.
Salience model
Describes groups of stakeholders based on how much power they have (level of authority or ability to affect the project’s outcomes), how urgently they need attention (due to a high stake in the outcome or limited time), and how legitimately they should be involved (the project is right for them to be involved).
There is a version of the salience model that uses proximity instead of validity to figure out how involved the team is with the project work. When there are a lot of complicated connections or a lot of stakeholders in a community, the salience model can be useful. It can also help you figure out how important each of the listed stakeholders really is.
Directions of influence.
groups people into groups based on how they affect the project or the project team’s work. There are different types of stakeholders, which are:
- Upward (senior management of the performing organization or customer organization, sponsor, and steering committee),
- Downward (the team or specialists contributing knowledge or skills in a temporary capacity),
- Outward (stakeholder groups and their representatives outside the project team, such as suppliers, government departments ), or
- Sideward (the peers of the project manager, such as other project managers or middle managers ).
Prioritization
It might be necessary to prioritize stakeholders in projects with a lot of them, where people in the stakeholder community change often, or where there are complicated ties between stakeholders and the project team or within the stakeholder community.
Meetings
Meetings help people learn more about the important people involved in a project. Facilitation workshops, small group talks with a leader, and virtual groups that use computers or social media to share ideas and look at data are all examples of these types of meetings that help in stakeholder identification and analysis.
Identify Stakeholders: Outputs
Stakeholder Register
The stakeholder Register is the primary result of the Identify Stakeholders process. Information on recognized stakeholders is included in this document, including but not limited to:
- Identification information : Name, role in the project, organizational position, location, and contact information.
- Assessment information : The stakeholder’s main needs, expectations, ability to affect project outcomes, and the part of the project life cycle where they have the most influence or effect.
- Stakeholder classification : Internal/external, impact/influence/power/interest, upward/downward/outward/ sideward, or any other classification model chosen by the project manager.
Change Requests
There won’t be requests for changes during the first round of identifying key stakeholders. Throughout the project, new stakeholders or new knowledge about stakeholders may lead to a request for changes to the product, the project management plan, or the project documents.
The Perform Integrated Change Control method takes change requests and reviews and decides what to do with them.
Project Management Plan Updates
There will be no changes to the project management plan once the parties are known at the start of the project. Using a change request, any changes to the project management plan must go through the organization’s change control method as the project moves forward. The following parts of the project management plan may need a change request:
Requirements management plan
Adding new stakeholders can change how actions related to requirements are planned, tracked, and reported.
Communications management plan
The communications management plan lists the communication needs of stakeholders and the agreed-upon ways to communicate.
Risk management plan
When agreed-upon communication strategies and stakeholder communication needs change how risk is managed on the project, this is recorded in the risk management plan.
Stakeholder engagement plan
The stakeholder engagement plan lists the agreed-upon ways to communicate with selected stakeholders.
Project Documents Updates
Because of this method, project documents like, but aren’t limited to, the following may be updated:
Assumption log
A lot of what we know about the power, interest, and involvement of stakeholders is based on beliefs. We write this down in the assumption log. It is also possible to put any limitations that come with dealing with certain stakeholders when doing stakeholder identification and analysis .
Issue log
The issue log keeps track of any new problems that come up because of this process.
Risk register
As identification of key stakeholders in a project process goes on, any new risks that are found are written down in the risk register and managed using the risk management methods.
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