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By Issa Bass
The stakeholders are the people who can affect or can be affected by a project. They can be department managers, customers, suppliers or anyone among the employees who will contribute to its concretization.
But the importance of all the stakeholders in a project is not the same. So a stratification of the stakeholders according to how they impact or are impacted by the project is very important.
The techniques used to identify the stakeholders, determine their relative importance for
a project and stratify them are called the Stakeholder Analysis. The benefit of using this technique is that it helps anticipate how the different groups will influence the project and therefore develop the appropriate response strategies to remove obstacles and reduce negative impacts.
The first step is to determine who the stakeholders are and how they
affect the project. This step is better achieved during a brainstorming session.
After the list of the stakeholders is agreed upon, they are subdivided into groups according to their domain of interest and how they
can benefit or hinder the project (a special tool called Force Field Analysis deals with how to approach the negative forces that might be opposed to changes).
The next step will consist into classifying them according to their importance for the project and then assessing the responsibilities and expectations for all of them.
- Assess every stakeholder's positive or negative impact for the project and grade their impact (From 1 to 5 or from A to E
for instance).
- Determine what can be done to lessen their negative impacts and improve their positive contribution to the project.
The following matrix is an example of a synthesis of a stakeholder analysis.
| Stakeholders |
How do they relate to the project? |
How does the project impact them? |
How do they impact the project? |
How to maximize the positive impacts on stakeholders |
How to minimize negative impacts on stakeholders |
| Customers |
5 |
5 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
| Program managers |
4 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
| Operations |
4 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
| Inventory |
3 |
3 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
| Suppliers |
1 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
| Employees |
4 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
| Institutions Outside the Company |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
2 |
About the author
Issa Bass is the managing editor of SixSigmaFirst. He can be reached at issa@sixsigmafirst.com
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