Stakeholder management during the discovery phase. Influence mapping.
The discovery phase is full of uncertainties and questions that can cause a number of difficulties. In my work at this stage, I create quite a lot of documentation and various sets. One of the tools that can help you sort out the stakeholders of a project and understand which people are responsible for what is influence mapping. This tool can help you understand and document the stakeholders and their impact on the product. Who you have to work with directly, who you have to keep in the loop, and who is just worth knowing about. You’ll have a clear hierarchy of decision-making process, and you simply won’t have to worry the people who are busy doing completely different things.
Usually, with me, it was a pretty straightforward and simple process. Depending on the task, I was given a list of people I could come to with questions or solutions. Sometimes it ended well; sometimes I was playing ping pong and found myself in a situation where it took me a whole day just to figure out how to implement it and who was responsible for it.
Influence mapping is a pretty simple tool to help you understand who to ask for help. I don’t recommend using this tool on every project because, if you have 1 manager that you work with and they make the final decisions, the hierarchy looks fairly straightforward. This is useful if you have more than one manager/stakeholder or if you are working on a project where there is more than one direction.
If this is your case, let’s then figure out what it looks like and what you need for it. Mapping can be done in 2 cases. The first: since you just joined the project, it’s pretty hard to tell who is responsible for what and who exactly you should go to. The second is that you have been working on the project for quite a while, and you know well who is takes charge of what.
The first case — newcomer
As a newcomer to the project, you will definitely need help with the mapping, so ask who can help you with it. Ideally, this person has been working there for a long time, has a clear understanding of the structure and hierarchy of the project, and is involved in the technical part.
Invite this person to a meeting and do a little preparation.
You will need to create a board to fill in together. On which there will be two X and Y axes, where X will be responsible for interest and Y for influence.
You’ll have four main stakeholder boxes: monitor, keep informed, keep satisfied, and actively engage. Here in the prioritization, you can have a manager; if you have a chance to find out why that is and in that order, it will only be a plus — you can get a deeper understanding of the hierarchy and a pretty deep understanding of who makes decisions.
- High influence / high interest — these are your most important stakeholders that you should keep informed of and actively engage with.
- High influence / low interest — these stakeholders are to be kept informed, they may want to make changes.
- Low influence / high interest — keep these people informed about the updates. They will always help if needed.
- Low influence / low interest — usually, you don’t need keep them informed, but they may be useful during the testing for example.
Then, according to these fields, you create a list of names or departments and place them according to their roles.
This activity also can be done separately, so prepare a whiteboard and tell what you need from the stakeholder and what he or she has to do. You can either prepare a list of people or ask the stakeholder to do it themselves.
The second case — existing employee
Is it worth spending time on mapping if you’ve been working on a project for a long time and you know who makes decisions? I think it is beneficial because new people join the team all the time, people change departments, or employees from other agencies or freelancers come to help. If you have a deep knowledge of the processes, make up this model yourself. It won’t take too much your time, and documenting this will make life a lot easier for new people or maybe for the teammates too.
After mapping it, approve it with your manager, because it may be subjective only for your department, and the level of the situation may be a little various and decisions are made a little differently. I think they will help you with this and will definitely show you the whole picture.
Such a map should be stored in your shared knowledge base or your department’s knowledge base, such as Confluence.
Very often, I also encountered just tables with information about the project, describing people’s roles. But that is not always what they are responsible for. Is it worth making this map in this case? Here everything is very subjective and depends on the timing. Sometimes it will be easier for you to add duties to the existing table and decide what questions to ask this person. But if there are a lot of them or responsibilities overlap, then this mapping would be a great addition.
Make your life easier
To do your job well and meet customer requirements, you have to have a clear picture of all the elements of interactions. Stakeholder management is a crucial part of this. For example, making this map can simplify and speed up the decision-making process; you won’t distract people with issues they’re not involved with, and you’ll make your life easier too. So this investment in terms of time and a little effort can have a very positive impact on the work process and definitely pay off.
