This stakeholder analysis technique is presented in Business Process Management Practical Guidelines to Successful Implementations, by John Jeston, and Johan Nelis. It is designed specifically for BPM projects which are hugely dependent on stakeholder buy-in to business process improvement if they are to be successful.
analyze Stakeholders for Business Process Management (BPM)
They rightly point out that a BPM project can have many individual Stakeholders. For example even on a small BPM project the following groups may need to be considered and can amount to many Stakeholders.
Communicating and engaging with everyone in these grouping won't be necessary or cost effective so the next step is to use a three simple tools to quickly analyze the stakeholders and identify individuals or groups who should be engaged with.
Individual Stakeholder Analysis
John Jeston, and Johan Nelis suggest that the Stakeholders are reviewed against the following criteria:
Stakeholder type or group and Name
Power today – the source of their power, and their relative strength
Power after implementation of project – the source of their power, and their relative strength
Ability to influence project and other stakeholders
The first matrix maps Stakeholders ability to impact the project against their view of the project. A grid is used with view of the project from negative to positive mapped on the x axis. Ability to impact the project sits on the y axis and is rated from high to low.
Once Stakeholders are mapped onto the grid it will quickly become apparent where effort should be expended in engaging and influencing. The goal being to influence Stakeholders so that their view of the project can be more positive or their impact on the project can be reduced or increased.
Jeston and Nelis don't attempt to label the four categories in the grid, but it might be helpful to add labels to for example:
Ability to impact – High. View of project – Positive = Champions/key players
Ability to impact – High. View of project – Low = Saboteur – these are stakeholders who could derail the project.
Ability to impact – Low. View of project – High = Cheerleaders.
Ability to impact – Low. View of project – Low = Heckler. Stakeholders who while negative are not influential. They could influence a Saboteur or be used to support a Saboteur's negativity or reduce the positivity of Cheerleaders so they shouldn't be ignored.
The stakeholder map is not fixed. Stakeholders may develop a view or change their view during the project so the mapping process should be revisited throughout the project and the map updated.
Enthusiasm for project and Commitment to project
The second matrix maps enthusiasm for the project against commitment to the project on an 8 x 8 grid. Jeston and Nelis suggest that while similar the second matrix provides subtle differences which are useful to explore, and will help with creating a stakeholder engagement plan.