Topic

Stakeholder Identification & Engagement (Internal & External)

Response

A stakeholder is any person, organisation, group that has a stake in the success of the initiative. Therefore, stakeholders can be internal or external of the organisation. Ensuring the successful identification and long-term engagement of your stakeholders is an important activities during the early phase of a project. And one that requires constant refinement and relationship building through a well developed stakeholder communication strategy. At the core of a successful stakeholder engagement and communication strategy lies a spreadsheet consisting of the following sections.

Stakeholder Identification.
- Stakeholder Role (Customer, Consumer, Catalyst, User or Contributor)
- Organisation or Department (Team, Internal, External, Supplier or Partner)
- Stakeholder Influence (low or high)
- Stakeholder Interest (low or high)
- Engagement Approach
Stakeholder Power Map Matrix
Stakeholder Communities
Stakeholder Communication Schedule
Stakeholders Feature Ownership

Stakeholder Identification

Agile Teams are required to capture the details for each and everyone of their Stakeholders (column b): Stakeholder Name. An initial investment is required to capturing the following details for each of the Stakeholders to ensure the Team engages with them correctly and correctly communicates with them.

Stakeholder Role (Customer, Consumer, Catalyst, User or Contributor)
Organisation or Department (Team, Internal, External, Supplier or Partner)
Stakeholder Influence (low or high)
Stakeholder Interest (low or high)
Engagement Approach

Stakeholder Power Map Matrix

The Power Map matrix is an optional method for identifying the intensity of your stakeholder engagement. The engagement level for each of the stakeholders, which the Agile team has identified will be revealed using two parameters: Interest (Low - High) Power (Low - High).

Stakeholder Communities

A reasonable amount of Stakeholder analysis is necessary to correctly group the Stakeholders based on their core characteristics to form an appropriate number of Stakeholder Communities (i.e. groups of Stakeholders that have a similar interest, contribution or need).

Stakeholder Communication Schedule

Ideally, Teams will identify approx 5 to 10 Stakeholder Communities (columns B, C & D in the Plan tab).

Stakeholders Feature Ownership

As the matrix below indicates, individual Stakeholder involvement must be defined for each major Feature on the Product Backlog.

Discover more

Additional information, including working examples and templates are available in the Monetical knowledge base.