From the course: Business Analysis Foundations

Classifying your stakeholders

From the course: Business Analysis Foundations

Classifying your stakeholders

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- Not all stakeholders are created equal. Some have a vision and some are deep down in the weeds. The first thing you need to ask yourself is this. Who have I been given, and who do I really need? Do you have someone who knows the situation, but can they make decisions, or do you just have a warm body? Now, we say this all the time because too often we get whomever is available. No matter how much you like your lineup of stakeholders, you've got to do a proper assessment of who they are and how they're involved. One of the most common ways to do this is to use the power/interest grid. Now, this grid allows us to evaluate a stakeholder based on their power or ability to affect the project and their interest, which we could say it's their perception of how the project will affect them. Your low power, high interest people are the ones that are working with the problem area. They're affected, but don't typically have the ability to make meaningful changes. Now, your high power people are the executives and upper management. They usually are lower in interest and just want to know the bottom line or final recommendations, but you'll need to continue to double check. For example, I had an executive one time who gave us his request at the beginning of the analysis. When we presented him with the final recommendations, he was disappointed we hadn't fulfilled all these other requests he had thought about in the interim. Now, he didn't tell us any of this, so how would we know? But then again, we could have asked him more explicitly and made the request period more clearly defined. Your low power, low interest people are more often than not what you've got. These are what we call the warm bodies. Unfortunately, they usually get assigned because they don't have much else going on, or management just doesn't know what else to do with them. The people in the high power and high interest grid are obviously going to need a lot of attention. They can suggest changes as they perceive the change that will affect them. We'll go over the nuances of engagement with stakeholders in another video. At the end of your assessment, you'll want to be able to identify if you have stakeholders that give you what you need. Do they provide access to resources? Do they have the decision making power? Can they provide the data you need for analysis? Can they provide the perspective and insight on the activities that are being assessed? Can they help with the completion of the analysis and required documentation? Understanding your stakeholders help you identify where you might need to spend more time or resources. It also helps you figure out how to engage with them. All of this is part of an early but important step in determining your business analysis activities that are required for success.

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