Stakeholder Analysis Approach, Getting it right!
Getting your stakeholder analysis right is key to an effective change management strategy.
As part of your change management strategy you should define the approach you are going to take when carrying out the analysis on your stakeholders.
What do I mean by approach? Well, before you carry out any exercise within your project you really should consider how you are going to go about it and this should be based on a number of things:
- How many different people or groups are involved in the process?
- How much time do you have to complete it?
- How much time will each of the parties need to commit to the process e.g. will they need to spend days or weeks in workshops before the analysis is complete.
- Will you do it in stages, for example will you start with a high level analysis and then flesh it out in more detail as the project progresses and more information comes to hand.
- What are the outcomes you are trying to achieve? Well in this case, you want a comprehensive analysis of your stakeholders.
- What is the best way of communicating and carrying out the required steps for example you may decide the best approach to begin with is to interview a number of key stakeholders and then gather more detail during requirements gathering. If you were defining your approach to documenting your ‘As Is’ process maps then you may decide use a series of workshops.
- Where are all the parties located that need to be involved in the process? If they are spread across the country or the world you may need to get creative or make use of some fantastic technology.
Taking the time to document how you plan to go about achieving your stakeholder analysis allows you to visualize the process from beginning to end and identify any possible issues and roadblocks early and before they arise. Then you can build into your approach ways around those issues so you can avoid them all together.
Your approach should include who, what, when and how. For each stakeholder or stakeholder group:
Who do you need to talk to and understand in each group, management or specific team members?
What information is required to understand each stakeholder?
When will this be carried out, next week, in one month for 5 weeks?
How will you be performing the analysis with each stakeholder? Workshops, meetings, get them to collate and email information?
Then for this to be truly effective and to get the most support, share this with your stakeholders and ask for their input also.
Find Stakeholder Analysis and Change Management Strategy related information at Projectcommunityonline.com
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