Best Stakeholder Analysis & Mapping Guide | Everything You Need for Stakeholder Assessments

Best Guide to Conducting and Delivering Stakeholder Assessment, Mapping & Analysis

The Complete Guide to Stakeholder Analysis & Mapping – Everything You Need

Published for Project Managers, Change Management Practitioners, Program Managers, and Change Leads, this free guide provides you with everything you need to know about the best change management stakeholder mapping framework for projects.

It provides a step-by-step walkthrough of key stakeholder mapping activities that you need to complete, and references stakeholder mapping examples, samples, stakeholder analysis templates, stakeholder plan matrix, and change tools that you can use for your needs.

This guide is designed for practitioners in any industry, including healthcare, construction, business, finance, corporate, retail, professional services and more.

Sample stakeholder engagement assessment matrix | streamlined stakeholder analysis grid

Stakeholders can make or break a change management project depending upon whether they support or resist the change and what influence they may have on other stakeholders. Stakeholders are also vital to driving your change project forward, so it’s important to identify those stakeholders that are willing to help.

All this makes stakeholder analysis, assessment, and management one of the most important activities performed during the change management process.

Certain stakeholders will need to be engaged on a regular basis throughout the project, while other stakeholders will need to be invited to be part of the Change Champions Network to help increase the success of the project. Some stakeholders will need to be coached or included as key allies in your resistance management strategy.

Are there other stakeholder mapping examples you would like to see listed in this guide, including stakeholder analysis in healthcare or other industries? Please reach out and let us know.

Table of Contents – Everything You Need for Effective Stakeholder Analysis, Mapping & Assessments

Keep on scrolling down this page to read each section or click any link below to go directly to that section.

1. Should You Use a Stakeholder Matrix Tool?
2. Increasing the Successes of Your Project Stakeholder Analysis
3. Quick Overview – What You Need to Know
4. During Which Phase of Your Project Should You Conduct a Stakeholder Analysis?
5. What is Stakeholder Analysis? Stakeholder Assessment Definition
6. What is Stakeholder Mapping?
7. Stakeholder Analysis Process: Key Steps
8. Step-by-Step Process for Identifying Stakeholders
9. Stakeholder Mapping Matrix
10. Why Stakeholder Mapping is Important
11. Determine the WIIFM for Each Stakeholder/Group
12. Planned Tasks & Strategy for Engaging Stakeholders
13. Why You Should Coach Key Stakeholders and Sponsors
14. Engage and Manage Stakeholders
15. How Do You Measure Stakeholder Support, Availability, Etc.?
16. Change Management Stakeholder Assessment Tool & Templates
17. Getting Started with AGS Toolkits – Stakeholder Engagement Map

How to Make the Case for Change Management

Making the Case for Organizational Change Management

Easily explain the value of change management to your leadership, key stakeholders, sponsors, and management with this ready to use Change Management Presentation PPT Deck: Making the Case for Change Management.

Do you have any questions about the stakeholder map template referenced in this guide? Do you have additional stakeholder analysis examples you would like to see listed in this guide, that can help other program managers and change practitioners conduct their own stakeholder analysis in project management, including stakeholder mapping example in healthcare, finance, professional services, or other sectors? If so, please reach out and let us know.

Should You Use a Stakeholder Matrix Tool (Also Known as a Stakeholder Mapping Tool)?

When conducting stakeholder analysis, project practitioners often use a stakeholder matrix tool to document their stakeholder assessments.

Using a stakeholder matrix is essential as it will provide you with a holistic view of your stakeholder impact analysis. It will also act as a centralized file from which you will be developing and implementing your stakeholder management plans and stakeholder engagement activities.

Organizing your stakeholders into different “types” will help you plan your stakeholder engagement activities accordingly, and if you are using a stakeholder mapping template, it should come with a column that will allow you to flag a stakeholder based on that stakeholder’s types (e.g., is the person a sponsor, an impacted business executive, a senior manager, a change champion/agent, a super user, an influencer, or other?).

The stakeholder mapping example screenshot below outlines a stakeholder assessment matrix that has a Stakeholder Type column for mapping your stakeholders.

Illustration: stakeholder analysis example with different stakeholder types

Sample stakeholder map template with a streamlined “Stakeholder Type” column.

Reach out to us if you have feedback on other best stakeholder mapping templates free or paid that you have used in the past, including healthcare stakeholder map templates, financial services mapping, construction stakeholder mapping, retail stakeholders, example of stakeholder analysis in healthcare, and other types of project stakeholder assessments.

Increasing the Successes of Your Project Stakeholder Analysis

As a Senior Change Management Consultant, I have delivered global transformations that impacted thousands of employees and customers across Intel, Apple, Capital One, Accenture, HSBC, Deloitte, and other firms.

A decade after Steve Jobs handed the reins of leadership at Apple to Tim Cook, I was hired to create Apple’s first-ever B2B Change Management Practice.

During my tenure in organizational change management and program implementation, I have discovered that applying the stakeholder analysis model and best practices described below increases the success of change implementation by an additional 82% on average.

Ogbe Airiodion
Senior Change Management Program Manager

Don’t Miss: Stakeholder analysis templates to use.

What is the Importance of Stakeholder Analysis?

Why is stakeholder analysis important? Stakeholder assessment is a critical component of effective business change management because it increases the success of your stakeholder engagement and management.

Mapping and assessing stakeholders are also important because they are fundamental activities for a change management project.

Output from your stakeholder mapping and analysis will feed into other areas of change management and provide you with a “master list” of key employees, managers, and others that will be impacted by a project.

In addition to identifying key stakeholders in a project, another importance of stakeholder analysis is that it allows you to identify key stakeholder metrics and KPIs, such as:

Which stakeholders are being impacted the least or most by a change project?
Where each stakeholder stands on receptiveness to the change.
Which stakeholders can impact a change project the most?
The availability level of stakeholders for accomplishing change activities.

This stake holder mapping guide is designed for Project Managers, Change Management Practitioners, HR, Business Analysts, Change Leads, and anyone that has been assigned to conduct an effective stakeholder analysis and mapping.

This free guide provides you with a step-by-step overview of everything you need to know for conducting and increasing the success of your stakeholder analysis, mapping, and assessment, and involves how to identify the who, what, why, and when that is required for an effective stakeholder assessment.

The image above is another example of the importance of stakeholder analysis. It outlines how stakeholder matrix mapping informs other areas of your change management activities.

Do you have any questions about the stakeholder engagement assessment matrix outlined in this guide? Is there a best stakeholder strategy that you have used that you would like to share with other project managers and change leads? Please, reach out and let us know.

Don’t miss: Get your stakeholder mapping tools and start conducting your project stakeholder analysis today.

Are there other best stakeholder mapping template Excel or cloud based, including stakeholder analysis in healthcare that you have feedback on? Reach out and let us know.

During Which Phase of Your Project Should You Conduct a Stakeholder Analysis?

If you are following a change model, such as the AGS Change Management Framework, you’ll note that there are typically different change activities performed at different phases of a project.

For example, the AGS Change Model has five phases:

Phase 1: Assess
Phase 2: Develop
Phase 3: Deploy
Phase 4: Normalize
Phase 5: Exit

Your stakeholder analysis steps should be started during Phase 1 when you do your various change assessments.

Stakeholder analysis is one of the initial activities that you’ll perform after you’ve identified your impacted groups since your stake holder mapping analysis will drive several other activities that you do in other phases of your change project.

Developing your stakeholder management plan will come in Phase 2 (Develop), and you will execute that plan and actively manage your stakeholders in Phase 3 (Deploy) and Phase 4 (Normalize).

Illustration: Sample Stakeholder Mapping Templates

Stakeholder analysis matrix template example

Is there a best stakeholder mapping template in Word, PDF, PowerPoint, or Excel document that you have used that you would like to share with other project managers and change leads? Please, reach out and let us know.

See also: change management stakeholder analysis templates for identifying project stakeholders at your organization.

What is Stakeholder Analysis? Stakeholder Assessment Definition

Stakeholder analysis and assessment is a process used to identify key individuals that have a stake in a project, program, or transformational change. Stakeholder assessment involves identifying managers, business leaders, employees, and groups that will be impacted by a change initiative. The leaders and managers are often referred to as “key stakeholders.”

Your list of stakeholders in your stakeholder analysis and management template will include:

People & groups who will be impacted by a change project
People & groups who will be influenced by a change project
People & groups who may hold influence over a change project

By “stakeholder” do you mean ALL Employees?

In some cases, a Stakeholder Analysis template will list out each employee. However, in the case of an organization with thousands of employees, it’s not quite as feasible to include ALL impacted employees. In this case, the change management team may decide instead to include “key” stakeholders, such as leaders of a department, team representatives, or sponsors of the change in their stakeholder template.

These key stakeholders should represent all areas and levels of an organization being impacted by the change project, so you’ll have a good cross-section of all impacted individuals. This includes impacted divisions, departments, groups, teams, job roles, executives, employees, front-line workers, leadership, etc.

Why not just include all the managers of departments being impacted in your stakeholder analysis? Wouldn’t that be easier?

You would not only want to include managers or leadership of impacted areas in your stakeholder analysis because leaders are impacted differently than employees. If you leave out the representation of an important group of impacted individuals in your stakeholder analysis, you could end up with unexpected opposition from those groups that you didn’t assess for resistance, support, impact on the project, etc.

Also, it’s not only employees that may be stakeholders of a change project. If a change is impacting vendors or large customers, then they also could be considered stakeholders.

It’s up to you how you approach your stakeholder analysis. Determining the scope of people and groups you include when analyzing and managing stakeholders would be something you’d want to determine when doing your project assessment.

Don’t miss: All-in-One Stakeholder Mapping Tools

Do you have feedback about other stakeholder influence map and stakeholder analysis grid templates that you have used in the past? Reach out to let us know.

What is Stakeholder Mapping?

Stakeholder mapping is the process of mapping key stakeholders to the respective impacted organizations and entering the stakeholder information into a stakeholder analysis template. Stakeholder mapping ensures that you are tracking all stakeholders necessary across groups that will be impacted by a change.

In the sections below, we provide an overview of the best stakeholder analysis processes for assessing and mapping stakeholder groups. We will also reference the stakeholder map tool that you can use for your needs.

Stakeholder Analysis is done in the early stages of a change management project.

Is there a best stakeholder matrix mapping technique that you have used in the past that you would like to share with other project managers and change leads? Please, reach out and let us know.

See also: Stakeholder analysis tools for mapping key stakeholders in a project

Stakeholder Analysis Process: Key Steps

Step-by-Step Process for Identifying Stakeholders

When starting your stakeholder analysis process, your first step will be spent gathering your list of key stakeholders. This list will include managers, senior managers, business leaders, employees, specific job roles, and executives that have or might have a stake in the business or technology change.

The difference between a key stakeholder and another stakeholder (non-key) is that a key stakeholder will have more influence over the project. This may be because they’re a manager and their team will follow their lead. Or they may be an executive that can impact the budget and timeline of the change project. They could also be a “super user,” which would be an employee that is very proficient at the process being changed.

Stakeholder Mapping Process, Grid, and Analysis Diagram Template.

Unless you have a small or mid-sized organization, you will most likely not be including every single employee in your stakeholder analysis template, as noted above. Rather, you want to identify specific representatives of your stakeholder groups and any key stakeholders as identified above.

During stakeholder matrix mapping, you will be identifying key individuals in the following stakeholder groups to include in your analysis and management activities:

Decision-makers
Change sponsors
Employees representatives from departments being impacted
Contractor/vendor representatives
Customer representatives, if customers are being impacted
Change Champions/Agents
Department heads/managers
Change management team members
Other representatives of impacted groups or job roles

It’s not unusual to have more than one stakeholder on your stakeholder chart list from the same department or organizational group. For example, you might include both a department manager and the change champion/agent identified to facilitate change in that department.

This comprehensive list of project-critical stakeholders is often referred to as the “Universal List of Stakeholders.”

Follow the list of tasks outlined below when gathering your Universal List of stakeholders:

1. Work with the project team, program managers, and the primary sponsors to identify stakeholders that can be added to your stakeholder matrix.
2. Review organizational stakeholder charts to identify key managers to add to your list.
3. Conduct a change impact assessment to identify which groups are impacted. After identifying impacted groups, the next step will be to identify the managers, influencers, and others in those groups that should be added to your stakeholder assessment matrix
4. Work with subject matter experts and managers within impacted organizations to identify other key individuals that should be added to the project management stakeholder matrix.
5. Review the project charter, statement of work, and any other documentation to identify any additional stakeholders that you can add to your stakeholder analysis map list.

Tip: Request a list of employees from the HR Department. You can remove any people that you aren’t including in your stakeholder analysis and then upload that list right into AGS 360° Portfolio’s Stakeholder Template, saving you a lot of data entry time! (more on this below)

See also: Stakeholder analysis tools for mapping key stakeholders in a project.

FYI that you can use the AGS stakeholder tools as a stakeholder mapping template excel export to use offline and then re-upload your data to the cloud version to leverage our cutting-edge analytics.

Stakeholder Mapping Matrix

Either before or in conjunction with completing the stakeholder assessment tasks above, you will want to develop your stakeholder analysis mapping template.

As part of your stakeholder mapping technique, you can create this stakeholder mapping template by yourself from scratch based on the information presented on this page. In addition, or as an alternative to save a lot of time, you can use AGS’ #1 Best Stakeholder Mapping Tool.

The AGS stakeholder assessment matrix software includes simple-to-use stakeholder analysis samples, a best-in-class stakeholder mapping template, charts, and an advanced reporting dashboard to help you easily track and manage project stakeholders.

Using your stakeholder assessment mapping template, you should document the following pieces of stakeholder analysis information:

Stakeholder types
Stakeholder first and last names
Stakeholder job role/title
Stakeholder organizational details (division, department, etc.)
Ability to impact or influence the project
Level of support for the change project
Availability (i.e., how much additional “bandwidth” a person has)
Details on current stakeholder situation (more on this below)
Planned tasks and engagement strategy
Details on how success will be measured
Status on engagement success
Notes to communicate progress in reports to others
Details for any tasks that have been assigned to the stakeholder
The geographic location of stakeholders if you are tracking stakeholders in more than one office, city, country, etc.

Illustration –
AGS Stakeholder Assessment Matrix Template with Sample Data

Now, let’s discuss a few of those key pieces of stakeholder mapping technique information and why it is important to gather them during your stakeholder analysis.

Stakeholder Analysis Steps: Stakeholder Types

You should separate your stakeholders by type, otherwise planning engagement is going to take you a lot more time, because whenever you look at your list of stakeholders, you’ll need to remember whether they’re a change agent, executive, manager, etc.

If you use a Stakeholder Analysis Tool that has a dropdown column for “stakeholder type,” you can easily classify your stakeholders by their type and then use that to sort and filter while planning and managing your engagement activities.

Illustration: stakeholder influence map column

Sample stakeholder map template with a streamlined “Stakeholder Type” column.

Stakeholder Analysis Steps: Ability to Impact the Project

Also, you will need to identify and map out each stakeholder’s ability to impact the project. This information will drive your engagement plan for each stakeholder and help you prioritize. For example, if a stakeholder that can significantly impact or halt a change is opposing the change, then you will need to implement a plan to gain that person’s buy-in and mitigate their opposition as soon as possible.

If you don’t know which stakeholders have a high, mid, or low ability to impact your project, then you’ll be leaving yourself wide open to be blindsided by a resistant stakeholder with a high ability to impact the project.

Don’t Miss: Tool for Creating Stakeholder Influence Maps.

Stakeholder Analysis Steps: Level of Support

How supportive a stakeholder is of a project is a key driver for your engagement plan, which is why it’s important to use a scale for gauging the level of support for a change project.

This KPI is a key piece of information to be included in any stakeholder influence map and can also be cross-referenced with the ability to impact a project to identify the most critical stakeholders to engage with. For example, if a stakeholder has a high-level ability to impact a project and a low level of support for the project, you will want to plan a proactive engagement strategy to raise their level of support, so the project isn’t in danger of failing.

Illustration –
AGS Stakeholder Analysis Toolkit Interactive Report

Stakeholder Analysis Steps: Determine Availability

You can’t assume that every stakeholder is going to have as much time as you’d like for their change engagement, coaching, training, and other change-related activities.

Some may already be overwhelmed with their job duties, while others may have more time to devote to the change project. Knowing a stakeholder’s available bandwidth for needed and desired change activities can help you plan more strategically.

For example, you may choose a stakeholder to be a change champion from those stakeholders with more availability. Knowing which stakeholders have low availability provides you with a “heads up” that you should find time-efficient ways to engage.

If a stakeholder hears from you upfront that you respect the fact that they’re busy and will work with their schedule as much as possible, you will have a better chance of getting them to accomplish the change tasks you need.

Stakeholder Strategy – What Can You do if a Stakeholder has a Lack of Availability?

Put things together as much as possible for them, like communications you need them to cascade to their department. For example, instead of requiring the person to draft an email and then have you review it, your stakeholder plan for that person should involve just giving them the communication ready to go, and all they need to do is click “send.”
Expect the change or project team to do more of the heavy lifting for this stakeholder. The stakeholder plan for this person may require more follow-up to ensure any assigned tasks are moving forward.
Ask the stakeholder’s supervisor for pockets of time for them to perform some of the needed change activities. Be exact, such as “Could John get 1.5 hours this Thursday for a change-related training?” Do not just say, “I’m going to need more of John’s time during the project,” because this doesn’t give the supervisor enough detail for adjusting John’s workload. Gather all this information and enter it into this person’s stakeholder plan.
You might enlist someone else in their department (e.g., an assistant) to help them with certain assigned stakeholder tasks.

Stakeholder Strategy – Details on Current Stakeholder Situation

During your stakeholder analysis, you’ll want to use a column on your stakeholder mapping template to summarize the stakeholder’s current situation. The person’s stakeholder plan will then be based on how to move the person from their current state to the future state.

On the current state column, you’ll include the answers to questions like:

Is the stakeholder resisting, supporting, or unaware of the project?
Does the stakeholder have concerns about the project?
Is the stakeholder a good candidate for taking on some of the project tasks?
Does this stakeholder have control over the project’s budget or timeline?
What needs to be known about this stakeholder?

Stakeholder Strategy – Details on How Success Will Be Measured

One of the other key pieces of information you need to decide for a person’s stakeholder plan is how you will measure successful engagement with the stakeholder. You don’t want the level of engagement success to be completely objective scoring. It’s important to include specifics in your stakeholder map tool.

For example, if you are using a “High,” “Mid,” and “Low” for tracking the engagement success level with a stakeholder, you need to define what high, mid, and low mean.

Try to use quantitative measurements along with qualitative information for your levels where possible. Quantitative would be a hard number measurement of something, like how many meetings were attended or how many tasks were accomplished. Qualitative is descriptive and more subjective, such as how positive a person is feeling about a change project.

It’s also better to have more than one measurement of each success level on your stakeholder map tool. This provides a more robust set of KPIs that cover multiple angles and reduces the risk of stakeholder engagement success being based upon just one person’s opinion.

As an example, you might define success measurements as:

High = Stakeholder has no more reservations about the project and is fully supportive; and 4 out of 5 meetings have been attended.
Mid = Stakeholder has some reservations but is willing to give the project a chance; and 3 out of 5 meetings have been attended.
Low = Stakeholder is still resistant to the project and has objections; and less than 3 out of 5 meetings have been attended.

Taking the time to define your success measurements ahead of time will make your stakeholder strategy process go much faster and foster a more accurate assessment.

Illustration –
AGS 360 Stakeholder Impact Analysis & Management Tool

Organizing Your Stakeholders Impact Analysis Information

All of the information about your stakeholders needs to be gathered as part of your stakeholder mapping and entered into your AGS Stakeholder Mapping Matrix Template.

Using a stakeholder analysis template is very important because it allows you to effectively coordinate all aspects of your stakeholder mapping and assessment.

You can use AGS’ #1 Ranked Stakeholder Management Tool, AGS 360° Portfolio to help. This tool is an online change manager that is designed to help you plan, manage, and execute a successful stakeholders impact analysis, engagement, and management change project. Get interactive, real-time analytics and stakeholder assessment samples to ramp up the learning curve on your stakeholders impact analysis.

Illustration –
AGS 360° Portfolio Stakeholder Template for Managing Data

Get Your Copy of the AGS’ Stakeholder Analysis Mapping Tool

You can save time with this ready-to-go template for gathering your organizational stakeholder and key stakeholder information.

Advantages of using this tool for your stakeholder impact analysis:

Column templates are set up to capture all the data you need
Add or modify columns to customize the template
Instant analytics with robust reporting
Filter your data to uncover deeper insights
Easily glean a holistic view of overall receptiveness
Quickly see which stakeholders have low support for the change
Work on more than one project at a time
See how different change projects are impacting your stakeholders
Cloud-based, work from any device
Enterprise-class security, automatic backups, guest accounts, and more

Stakeholder Assessment & Management Tool

Why Stakeholder Mapping is Important

A stakeholder mapping assessment template allows you to document and determine each stakeholder’s level of commitment to the change (negative or positive), so you can effectively plan on how best to enlist their buy-in and support, or how to mitigate their opposition to the project.

A stakeholder mapping matrix also allows you to identify impacted groups that have no key stakeholder leaders. Using this information, you can then engage program sponsors and other project stakeholders to help you solicit more support for those impacted groups.

In most cases, we need stakeholders to help advocate for the project. Being an advocate involves wearing many hats including helping to reduce resistance, working with other senior executives to promote the program, helping to disseminate communications, and more.

Without a stakeholder assessment, you have no direction for your change project as to the people it is impacting. The whole point of change management is to guide people successfully through a change by using various engagement methods (communication, coaching, training, 1:1 discussion, etc.).

To do that, you first need to identify and assess the stakeholders you’ll be guiding through the change. This is what’s done in the stakeholder assessment and why effective stakeholder analysis in project management is a bedrock of your change management strategy.

Are there stakeholder analysis example pdf templates that you have used in the past and would like to provide feedback on? Please, let us know.

Determine the WIIFM for Each Stakeholder/Group

One of the most important things for a change manager to know and be able to express to stakeholders is the “What’s In It For Me” (WIIFM). In other words, what’s in it for them, how will they benefit?

People often oppose a change because they don’t see how they or their department/organization is going to benefit from it.

They may think one or more of the following:

“This is just going to mean more work for me!”
“Things are fine the way they are.”
“I don’t understand what this change is supposed to accomplish.”
“Is all this disruption during the change process going to be worth it?”

As a change manager, your job during stakeholder engagement is to tell them their WIIFM (i.e., what the benefits of this change will be to them and their department, coworkers, etc.)

You can find this information by accessing details in the project assessment and by interviewing sponsors and other leaders that were involved in initiating the project.

The WIIFM may be different for different stakeholders, groups, and job roles. So, you’ll want to document this in your stakeholder Template that you’re using for stakeholder analysis to associate each WIIFM with each stakeholder.

Illustration –
AGS Stakeholder Template for Planning Engagement Tasks

Do you have any questions about the stakeholder mind map? Are there stakeholder analysis example pdf templates that you have used in the past and would like to provide feedback on? Please, let us know.

Planned Tasks & Strategy for Engaging Stakeholders

The next step for your stakeholder mapping and assessment exercise will involve planning your engagement strategy with the stakeholder and assigning and tracking tasks.

These will be tasks for the person responsible for engaging with a stakeholder as well as any tasks you may assign the stakeholder themselves.

For example,

Say you have a stakeholder that is not very happy about the change project because they are so busy already that they dread having to learn a new process and way of doing things.

Some tasks for your change management team may be:

Meet with the stakeholder’s supervisor to discuss giving them some time in their week for a training session.
Review change management planning documents (like the project assessment) to gather a list of bullet points of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) to present to the stakeholder.
Meet with the stakeholder to go over the ways they will end up saving time and benefitting from the change.

Some tasks for the stakeholder may be:

Attend a 2-hour training session on the new process.
Send the change management team a list of concerns they still have after attending the training.

Typical Tasks for a Stakeholder

What types of tasks does a change manager typically assign a stakeholder they’re managing?

To understand that let’s briefly discuss the role of a typical stakeholder. They are usually representatives of an impacted group, meaning the entire group is not getting the same engagement level that you have with the stakeholder.

Thus, stakeholder activities examples will often involve waterfalling communications throughout their group/department/area, providing details on any resistance in their group, etc. They are a representative of the group.

Some of the typical tasks assigned to stakeholders include:

Assigning a communication and asking them to waterfall it down to others
Asking them to engage with other stakeholders to build support for the project
Asking for their help to engage with employees that are resistant to getting their buy-in and support

Enter the task information into your AGS Stakeholder Assessment Matrix and Template.

You’ll want to include task tracking as well, including columns for:

Task(s) due date
Who the task(s) is assigned to
Progress on task(s)
Whether or not task(s) has been completed

Illustration –
AGS Stakeholder Template with Task Planning

Stakeholder Analysis Table Example

Interested in a stakeholder mapping template excel download? Click here to read more about the AGS stakeholder analysis matrix examples and project mapping designs for assessing key stakeholders in a project.

Why You Should Coach Key Stakeholders and Sponsors

The influence that a key stakeholder has on his or her employees and direct reports is immeasurable for reducing resistance and increasing end-user acceptance of the change, which is why change and program management practitioners need to implement an effective coaching strategy, as reviewed below.

Oftentimes, sponsors and key stakeholders have little to no experience with effective change management practices. Part of your role will then be to coach them on the best change practices. Learn more about coaching stakeholders, sponsors, and managers.

To be effective sponsors, key stakeholders need to understand how vital they are to the success of the change initiative, including understanding their role in helping with communications, resistance management, engagement, and reinforcing the change.

In coaching managers and supervisors to become effective managers of change, your change management coaching plan will need to apply a multi-step approach. Click here to see a detailed coaching plan strategy that you can leverage for coaching key stakeholders.

Engage and Manage Stakeholders

Click here to review a separate article that we published which covers the process for engaging and managing stakeholders.

How Do You Measure Stakeholder Support, Availability, Etc.?

Stakeholder surveys are an excellent way to capture the necessary KPIs for your stakeholder analysis. You can survey stakeholders directly or those who manage the stakeholder.

One of the most effective ways to survey stakeholders is through an online form tool, such as Microsoft Forms. This makes it easy for users to fill out on any device, and the answers come in instantly to the Change Management Team, no having to collate several documents that have come in by email. You can easily export it as a stakeholder analysis pdf file, or as a PowerPoint (PPT) report to share with project leaders, sponsors and executives

Illustration –
AGS Stakeholder Toolkit & Stakeholder Analysis Table Includes Free Surveys to Capture KPIs

Is there a best stakeholder analysis model that you have used that you would like to share with other project managers and change leads? Please, reach out and let us know.

Change Management Stakeholder Assessment Tool & Templates

When conducting your stakeholder analysis, it is imperative that you use software, a stakeholder management tool, or a stakeholder management spreadsheet to document stakeholders, their impact levels, their level of support or resistance for the change, and other information.

The AGS Stakeholder Assessment & Management Tool includes a best-in-class stakeholder management database template, samples, a 360-degree analytics view of impacted groups, and much more that you can leverage to simplify and optimize your change management tasks.

Illustration –
Stakeholder Analysis Interactive Reports & Analytics

AGS 360° Portfolio is a full-featured cloud platform to help you plan, manage, and execute a successful change project, end-to-end, whether this is your first change project or your one-hundredth. You can choose from multiple change modules in the tool or just choose the Stakeholder Management Toolkit, and you can also export it as a stakeholder analysis pdf file, or as a PowerPoint (PPT) report to share with project leaders, sponsors, and executives.

Getting Started with AGS Toolkits – Stakeholder Engagement Map

If you subscribe to one or more AGS Toolkits, including the AGS stakeholder plan software, here’s how you get started!

Once you’ve subscribed, you’ll sign in and be taken to the 360° Main Dashboard page. To begin using your Toolkit(s), you would follow these steps:

Create a new project.
Name your project.
Add additional project members (if you wish)
Check the box(es) to enable your purchased or free AGS Toolkit(s) for that project.
Save your project.
Click to go to the Home Page of your project.
Your AGS Toolkits will be there on the Project Home Page waiting for you to dive in!

A benefit of the AGS software is that you can work from a centralized list of stakeholders and use those to populate other templates (coaching management, training, etc.). You can also see reporting across all projects and areas of your change project.

Click below to purchase this tool and for instant access that will allow you to get started right away.

Stakeholder Assessment & Management Tool

What is Stakeholder Analysis?

Stakeholder analysis is the process of assessing the stakeholders for a project or change. Stakeholder analysis is a critical component of effective project and change management because it increases the success of your stakeholder engagement and management. Read more in this article

How do you perform a stakeholder analysis?

When starting out your stakeholder analysis, your first step will be spent in gathering your list of key stakeholders. This list will include managers, senior managers, business leaders, employees, executives, and others that have or might have a stake in the business or technology change. Read more...

Why is a stakeholder analysis important?

A stakeholder analysis is very because allows you to document and determine each stakeholder’s level of commitment to the change (negative or positive), so you can effectively plan on how best to enlist their buy-in and support, or how to mitigate their resistance. Read more...

What is a stakeholder analysis matrix and how is it used?

A stakeholder analysis matrix is used to document information on stakeholders. It includes columns for documenting each stakeholder's level of commitment to the change (negative or positive), so you can effectively plan on how best to enlist their buy-in and support, or how to mitigate their resistance. Read more in this article

What are the roles and responsibilities of a stakeholder?

In most cases, we need stakeholders to help advocate for the project. Being an advocate involves wearing many hats including helping to reduce resistance, working with senior executives to promote the program, helping to disseminate communications, and more. As such, we also need to assess each stakeholder’s change management knowledge and experience and include that information in a stakeholder mapping matrix. We will discuss this in more detail above.

What Are the Functions of a stakeholder?

Stakeholders help advocate for a business change or project. Being an advocate involves wearing many hats including helping to reduce resistance, working with other senior executives to promote the program, helping to disseminate communications, and more.

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