The core idea of a stakeholder analysis is the following. Before you think about how you would solve a problem, you should first consider who is affected by any decision about the problem and who has both an influence on, and a specific “stake” in such a decision. Think first about what these stakeholders would propose to solve the problem, and try to understand why they propose what they propose. Based on these reasons for their proposals, try to identify what drives them, that is, what are the values and interests of these stakeholders.
- Before you start working on your stakeholder analysis, check out the explanations and instructions that you find on the stakeholder analysis page under the question marks for “Stakeholders,” “Proposals,” “Reasons,” and “Interests / Values.”
- Proposals and reasons need to be formulated in complete sentences, stakeholders and interests or values are just concepts. All entries must be comprehensible without much guesswork. Be clear.
- Make sure that “proposals” are really proposing what should be done, “reasons” are providing justifications for proposals, and “interests” and “values” what stakeholders want to achieve.
- For proposals it is often helpful to determine who should do what. Sometimes you need to determine under which circumstances something should be done.
- If it turns out that different stakeholders would propose the same things, consider merging them under a broader name.
- Check whether everything that you mention in the reasons shows up also in the interests. Since in later steps of the project only the interests and values that you enter here will be displayed, not the reasons, it is important that the list of interests includes everything mentioned in the reasons.
- Make sure that no entries are missing. However, if an interest or value has already been listed, then there is no need to repeat it.
- Check whether important stakeholders are missing.
- Check whether proposals of the same stakeholder contradict each other. If that happens, the stakeholder must be divided into two different, more specifically defined stakeholders.
- At the end, check whether your stakeholder analysis fits to your problem-formulation. If there is a mismatch, revise one of them.