Stakeholder Analysis is an important skill for Business Analysts.
Identifying them, understanding their requirements and engaging them in a project is essential.
Who they are and how they might be involved will vary according to the nature of the project that you are working on.
So its worth starting with a definition.
A Stakeholder is:
- Someone who has an interest in the system or business change under consideration.
- A potential source of business requirements and priorities.
- Anybody who may influence the project – in a positive or a negative way.
So, basically, anybody who might be affected by the proposed new system.
But because this means that there may be a large number, it is important to prioritise, as well as to identify all of them.
The role of the Business Analyst in Stakeholder Analysis is to:
- Identify who they are and prioritise.
- Understand their viewpoints and requirements.
- Engage them in the project.
- Keep them engaged throughout.
Here are some of the key principles that apply:
- Missing stakeholders may lead to missing requirements later.
- Get stakeholders involved early and make them feel a valued part of the project.
- Think widely – try to identify all stakeholders (within reason).
- Further analysis will allow you to prioritise and identify the most important.
- A minor stakeholder now may become more important later.
- But - beware “paralysis by analysis”.
- It is probably more common to identify too few stakeholders than too many.
One possible start point is to consider three broad categories that will apply to just about any project:
- Project Stakeholders.
- Business Stakeholders.
- External Stakeholders.
How to do this is covered in three earlier blog posts - use the links below to take a look:
You can then analyse your initial list in more detail
Here are my other blog posts on this topic - covering some of the fact finding techniques that you might use to analyse Stakeholders and how to apply them:
Stakeholder Analysis - Notes - Identifying Stakeholders - Part 2
Stakeholder Analysis - Notes - Identifying Stakeholders - Part 3
Stakeholder Analysis - Notes - Identifying Stakeholders - Part 2
Stakeholder Analysis - Notes - Identifying Stakeholders - Part 3
If you would like to learn more about this subject - look at my online course - on Udemy - Stakeholder Analysis.
This highly practical course covers the key concepts and techniques for Stakeholder Analysis.
It also includes a detailed practical case study that you can work through as you progress through the course. This will enable to to see how the techniques described apply in practice - and to apply them yourself to real business project situations.
For more information - use the link below:
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