Stakeholder Analysis gives invaluable information to the project. It must be done as formal as possible & as early as possible.  It must also be continued throughout the entire project life-cycle.  The analysis process focuses on finding the key influencers of the project stakeholders. You must be able to identify key parameters that greatly influence how the stakeholder will act towards the project.  See video for more details:



Different customers will have different expectations based on multiple parameters, the trick is to formalize this as much as possible, break it down, group things where possible, document your findings in a matrix (spreadsheet), continually update and revisit the tool, and create and evolve your strategy how the influencers can be managed.   A key focus is always on the end users (customers) but a proper analysis is much more and must also include all people/organizations that "have potential to impact the project" OR "have potential that they will be impacted by the project".

Examples of key stakeholder influencers (parameters) that will greatly impact the customers expectations and thus also greatly impact the success of your project include:
  • wants;
  • needs;
  • experience;
  • knowledge;
  • vested interest;
  • working agenda;
  • personal agenda;
  • education;
  • culture;
  • public and market influence;
  • etc.


The two external links below are value-added to review:


  • Link below has good definitions and a broader perspective from a quality management perspective:

http://www.institute.nhs.uk/quality_and_service_improvement_tools/quality_and_service_improvement_tools/stakeholder_analysis.html



  • Link below is a pdf that can be downloaded, gives more details and also some good examples.

http://www.mmu.ac.uk/bit/docs/Stakeholder-analysis-toolkit-v2.pdf