Creating a Stakeholder Analysis: How do you do that?

Published in

The Value Maximizers

7 min readNov 7, 2019

This article is the third article in the series. In the first article we addressed the question: “What is a stakeholder?”. In the second article we addressed the question: “What different types of stakeholders are there?” And in this last article from the series we address the question: “How do I make a good stakeholder analysis?” In order to answer this question, let’s do a short recap on the Interest and Influence that stakeholders have:

Interest is the (positive or negative) concern or interest that stakeholders have with you, your team(s) and/or your product(s)/service(s). A stakeholders’ interest is typically classified as high or low. Knowing the interests that your stakeholders have, helps to build a better relationship and to manage them more effectively.
You can distinguish Influence into formal influence and informal influence. Formal influence is based on a stakeholders’ formal, hierarchical position, which gives them formal power/influence. Informal influence is the power or influence that a person has without a formal position, but it was obtained through inspiring leadership or knowledge authority for example. E.g. Martin Luther King had a lot of influence, yet he didn’t have a formal position which provided him with that influence.

The Stakeholder Map: For making a stakeholder analysis

Stakeholders with a lot of influence can put their mark on the development of your product, regardless of whether the influence is formal or informal. As a Product Owner, it will help you to gain insight into the influence and importance of your stakeholders. By grouping stakeholders via a Stakeholder Map you create an overview of your stakeholder field. With that insight you can subsequently determine how you want to engage with these different stakeholder groups.

The Stakeholder Map: Mapping stakeholders on Power/Influence and Concern/Interest

In the Stakeholder Map you can classify stakeholders into one of the following groups, which will be explained in more detail as well below:

Stakeholders with low interest and low influence;
Stakeholders with low interest and high influence;
Stakeholders with high interest and low influence;
Stakeholders with high interest and high influence.

1. STAKEHOLDERS WITH LOW INTEREST AND LOW INFLUENCE

As a Product Owner, you want to spend as little time as possible on this group of stakeholders. This group of people has little interest in your product and/or its success. In addition, these people also have little influence on you, your team and/or your product or service. The stakeholder management strategy for this group of stakeholders is therefore Monitor.

Monitor is not the same as ‘ignore’ though… You do want to keep an eye on this group and occasionally evaluate if no changes have occurred. It is possible that people from this group shift to one of the other stakeholder groups, for example because of a promotion. Through such events, they may gain more interest or influence, which makes these stakeholders more important. In addition to monitoring them, you may want to inform this group of stakeholders. You can do this for example via blogs, intranet messages, newsletters or videos. Since this stakeholder group has low interest and low influence, you want to limit your time spent on them. Therefore, it’s a great idea to pick a communication channel that you’re using for other stakeholders already. This saves a lot of time and helps you to remain efficient and effective.

2. STAKEHOLDERS WITH LOW INTEREST AND HIGH INFLUENCE

As a Product Owner you also want to spend relatively little time on the group of stakeholders with low interest and high influence. This stakeholder group does not have much interest in your product, not in a positive or negative sense. However, this group of stakeholders does have a lot of influence. With this they may also have a lot of influence on you, your team and your product or service. The stakeholder management strategy for this group of stakeholders is Keep Satisfied.

As long as this group of stakeholders is satisfied with the results that are relevant to him or her, you will usually not hear or see them. These stakeholders are often interested mostly in the effect your product or service has on their department, team or business unit. However, if things go wrong, they often know where to find you. In order to effectively manage this group of stakeholders, you must primarily keep them informed about the KPIs and metrics that matter to them. Therefore, do not tell these stakeholders how great your product is or what new features you have made, but especially what (positive) influence your product has on the metrics that are important to them. In other words: give the Chief Finance Officer (CFO) insight into the trends and figures of costs, total cost of ownership and return on investment of the product. Give the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) insight into the success of the marketing campaigns, conversion rates and bounce rates. And show the Chief Operating Officer (COO) that the new developments lead to improvements in efficiency and fewer manual actions and disruptions.

Many Product Owners experience this stakeholder group to be the most difficult to manage. And to be fair, to be able to manage this group effectively, some political skills are pretty useful. On the other hand, it is also good to be aware that this group of people can also help you to increase your mandate/ authority. You can increase your mandate, because if you keep these people satisfied, you create space for yourself. Satisfying them however does not mean that you have to do everything they ask you to do! If you do everything they ask, you probably don’t deliver the most value for customers, users and the organization. What is meant is that you have to build a good relationship with them. Immerse yourself in their motives. Get to know their interests. Understand what they want and need to achieve to be successful themselves. And also understand what they are being ‘judged on’. With these insights you can inform, help and ultimately engage with them more effectively.

3. STAKEHOLDERS WITH HIGH INTEREST AND LOW INFLUENCE

These stakeholders have a higher interest in the operations and success of your product and/or you have a higher interest in them. Regardless of the interest that this group of stakeholders has, they have relatively low influence to intervene or to really change things. The consequence here is that these stakeholders often need formal processes, procedures or meetings, such as escalations or complaints, to get things moving. The stakeholder management strategy for this group is Proactively Inform.

You want to keep these stakeholders informed of (new) developments and you want them to be sufficiently involved in the development of the product. In this group, for example, you regularly see users, delegations of users and customers. You must decide for yourself whether or not that is justified. What often works well for this group is regular information through, for example, newsletters, blogs and videos. You can also involve these stakeholders in Sprint Reviews, product demos, user tests and brainstorming sessions. In any case, ensure that you approach this group proactively and schedule recurring appointments. Make sure that you regularly interact with this group and collect feedback. By planning the interaction in advance, you ensure that the interaction and feedback take place at times when it suits you and your team, thus preventing a group of stakeholders with little influence from determining your agenda.

4. STAKEHOLDERS WITH HIGH INTEREST AND HIGH INFLUENCE

The group of stakeholders with a lot of interest and a lot of influence is the most important stakeholder group for you as a Product Owner. These stakeholders not only have a great deal of interest in the success (or failure) of the product, but they also have a lot of influence to help determine success (or failure). The stakeholder management strategy for this group of stakeholders is Manage Closely or Active Collaboration.

You want to properly inform this group of stakeholders, actively involve them and ensure that they really know what is going on. Also, you want to offer them a stage to speak, use their knowledge and experience and make decisions together with them. For example, you actively collaborate with these stakeholders on the product vision, product strategy, product roadmap and Product Backlog. Together with these stakeholders you determine what is important and what is not. Together you determine value, estimate risks and set goals and deadlines.

Building strong relationships with these stakeholders is crucial. It is important to gain their trust and support. This group of stakeholders typically has a lot of influence within the organization. With their (formal) influence, they can really help you. Try to turn these stakeholders into ambassadors. Building a good relationship with them will prove to be very valuable, certainly when you encounter setbacks, difficult stakeholders or conflicting interests in tense times. Do you want to be able to effectively say no to the majority of your stakeholders? Do you want your decisions to be supported? And do you want to be backed-up in these decisions? Then you better make sure that you make ambassadors of this group of stakeholders!

The stakeholder group with high interest and high influence is the most important stakeholder group for you as a Product Owner. Therefore, be self-critical of who you plot in this quadrant. A common mistake by Product Owners is to plot too many stakeholders in this quadrant. The more stakeholders you qualify as ‘to Manage Closely’, the busier you will be. It is not impossible that you have many stakeholders with a lot of interest and influence. But if this is so in your situation, force yourself to make a top three or top five selection. Start working intensively together with these three to five stakeholders (your key stakeholders) on your product vision and strategy. And involve the other stakeholders primarily in the roadmap and Product Backlog.

Learn more about stakeholder management.

Do you want to learn more about stakeholders, stakeholder analysis and stakeholder management? Then read on in one of the following articles:

Do you really want to deepen your stakeholder management skills? Then contact us for a Stakeholder Management Training or participate in the Advanced Product Owner training and learn to master the Product Owner stance: The Influencer.

If you are a Product Owner, Product Manager, Scrum Master or Agile Coach with about a year or experience under your belt, go and explore our brand new class Advanced Product Owner class and master the six stances of the Product Owner ! Check out our Xebia Academy page for more information or inquire for an in-house class at training@xebia.com.