It is fair to say that an important factor to the success or failure of a project is the behaviour of stakeholders. Therefore, it is important to ensure that project stakeholders are identified, clear understanding of their position and, a plan that will allow effective communication so that they contribute to the successful completion of the project.

This post will cover the 2 stakeholder analysis templates and supporting processes needed to implement stakeholder analysis for your project.

What is a project stakeholder?

Before going into the practical explanation of the templates, it is important to have a clear understanding of what is meant by a project stakeholder. Wikipedia defines a stakeholder as follows:

“Project stakeholders are entities that have an interest in a given project. These stakeholders may be inside or outside an organization which: sponsor a project, or. have an interest or a gain upon a successful completion of a project; may have a positive or negative influence in the project completion.”

What is project stakeholder analysis?

Stakeholder analysis is the process of identifying stakeholders who have an interest in a project and to understand the impact of the project on them. This will then allow a plan to be developed to manage the interests of the stakeholders in a balanced manner.

It is important to recognise that it may not be possible to meet the interests of all stakeholders. Understanding this means that it is possible to identify how supportive the stakeholder will be to the project

Not all project stakeholders are equal!

Another important point, stakeholders have a varying degree of power and influence. Ideally, you want your stakeholders to hold the power and influence to support the project. This will allow for barriers to be removed. What is very challenging is where you have stakeholders with power and influence who do not support the project, this will make it very difficult to achieve.

The good news, having identified the position and drivers for each stakeholder, you will know where you have support and, where you do not. This will allow a stakeholder management plan to be created to move non supporters to supported (or at least move them to a neutral position so they do not adversely impact the project).

Tools and Templates

There are 2 core templates needed to complete project stakeholder analysis.

Stakeholder Analysis Template

Example project stakeholder analysis template

The template should at a minimum contain the following fields:

Ref

A unique reference to identify the stakeholder. This is useful if you are sorting data using Excel.

Name

Enter the name that will be used to identify the stakeholder. This can be an individual or entity.

Role

The role held by the individual or entity. This will provide important context for when assessing the impact of the stakeholder.

Influence

This is used to assess the influence and power of the stakeholder. The core values being:

1. Low power, low influence
2. Low power, high influence
3. High power, low influence
4. High power, high influence

Typically those identified as 1. low power, low influence can exercise the least impact to the project. Those identified as 4, high power, high influence can exercise the most impact and can be a great help (or hindrance) to the project.

It is possible to have separate fields in the template if required for “Power” and “Influence”. It comes down to how you wish to handle / use the data.
Advocate / Blocker
• Advocate – supportive
• Blocker – not supportive
• Neutral
• Unknown – note: try to reach assessment as soon as possible

This used to assess if the stakeholder is supportive or not supportive. There are 2 columns:

1. Current – this is the current assessment of the stakeholder
2. Required – this is the position needed for a stakeholder

Action Plan

Used to capture the actions that are needed to move the stakeholder from the Current position to Required position. The actions should be monitored on a regular basis.

Project Stakeholder Grid

Example project stakeholder grid template

Stakeholder_Analysis_Grid

While the Stakeholder Analysis Template should provide all of the information required, you can plot the information using a stakeholder grid.

It uses a 4 box principle to map each stakeholder against Power (vertical axis) and Influence (horizontal axis). Take the first row from the stakeholder analysis template and plot on the grid.
Each stakeholder should be colour coded to indicate if they are Advocate, Blocker or Neutral.

Stakeholder Analysis Template FREE Download

Both of the project stakeholder templates are available as a FREE download. Simply click on the links below to download. You will need software that supports MS Excel and MS Powerpoint.

Project Stakeholder Analysis Template Free Download
Project Stakeholder Grid Template Free Download

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