Stakeholder & Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder & Stakeholder analysis

Stakeholder:

Stakeholders can be defined as the individuals or groups with whom the organisation interacts or has interdependencies. Or Any individual or group that has legitimate (legal/rightful/valid) influence on the actions, decisions, policies, practices or goals of an individual or organisation is called stakeholder.

Possible stakeholders might be- Owner, Financial community, Local community, Activist groups, Customers, Consumers advocate groups, Trade unions or similar, Employees, Trace associations, Competitors, Suppliers, Government (local/regional/national), Political groups, Media, Academia.

Stakeholder Analysis

A stakeholder analysis provides information on key stakeholders to help manage relationship with them. The type of information included in a stakeholder analysis includes the following:

-       Names and organisations of key stakeholders

-       Their roles on the project

-       Unique facts about each stakeholder

-       Their influence of the project

-       Suggestions for managing relationships with each stakeholder (Schwalbe, 2009)

It is helpful to start preparing a stakeholder analysis during initiation and adding information to it during the planning process.

Sample Stakeholder Analysis:

July 3, 2009

Project Name: Just-In-Time Training Project

KEY STAKEHOLDERS
	Mike Sundby	Lucy Camarena	Ron Ryan	Mohammed Abdul	Julia Portman
Organisation	VP of HR	Training director	Senior HR stuff member	Senior programmer/analyst	VP of IT
Role on project	Project champion	Project sponsor	Led the Phase-I project	Project team member	Project steering committee member
Unique facts	Outgoing, demanding, focuses on the big picture; MBA with emphasis on ogranisational design	Very professional, easy to work with but can stretch out discussions; Ph.D. in education	Old-timer; jealous that he wasn’t asked to lead Phase-II project	Excellent technical skills, English his second language, weak people skills, not excited about a training project	Thinks the company is way behind in applying IT, especially for training; wary of many suppliers
Level of interest	Very high	Very high	High	Medium	High
Level of influence	Very high; can call the shits	Very high; subject matter expert	Medium; he could sabotage the project	High; needs strong IT support for project to succeed	High; people listen to her at steering committee meetings
Suggestions on managing relationship	Keep informed, ask for advice as needed	Make sure she reviews work before showing to managers	Ask Lucy to talk to him to avoid problems, ask him to be available for advice.	Help him see the project’s importance, encourage his creativity	Compliment her a lot, ask for additional IT support as needed.

[Source: Schwalbe, 2009]

Bibliography:

Polonsky, M. J. (2005), Stakeholder Thinking in Marketing, “European Journal of Marketing”, Vol: 39, Number: 9/10, ISS: 0309-0566

Schwalbe, K. (2009), Introduction to Project Management, 2^nd ed, USA: Cengage Learning