Stakeholder Identification and Definition

Stakeholder identification

Introduction

A stakeholder is anybody who is affected by the project. They can be internal or external and they can be at senior or junior levels. Stakeholders are crucial to the success of your project. Neglect them and they will actively work against you. Manage them well and they will actively promote you and your project.

The first step is to identify your stakeholders. Get your project team together and list everybody that you can think of who is, or will be affected by the project.

Tools and techniques

Brainstorming is a great way for identifying stakeholders. Ask someone to be the scribe and capture every name, organisation or type of stakeholder you can think of. Alternatively you could give everybody a pad of sticky notes and ask them to write each stakeholder on a post it. After 10 - 15 minutes put up the sticky notes on the wall or on flipchart paper.

Mind mapping is also a useful way of unlocking your creativity and helping the ideas to flow. Your scribe can draw a mind map on a whiteboard or flipchart or you can use 'mind-mapping' software.

If you are struggling you could try using categories to identify potential stakeholders. For example the OGC suggest that it can be helpful to organise stakeholders by the following categories:

users/beneficiaries;
governance (steering groups/boards);
influencers (trade unions, the media) and
providers (suppliers, partners).

See OGC, Managing Success Programmes, London: TSO, 2007 pg. 51.

Resources

Example stakeholder mind map