Context and Stakeholder analysis

stakeholder analysis is essential in identifying and understanding the participants in each project.  Successful managers build and understand the profile of persons of interest in their project before presenting the project. The three significant steps that anyone involved in a project needs to remember are summarized in three keywords; “Identify, prioritize and understand” (Nguyen, Mohamed, & Panuwatwanich, 2018).

As explained earlier, the initial stage begins with identifying stakeholders as people affected by the project in question. These people are directly affected by the project. Some of the stakeholders are represented in marketing, sales, executive team, and business customers. The list could long, and the entry to identifying them is by brainstorming a list of all possible stakeholders that incorporates the entire business team.

After identification, the obvious step is to prioritize the list of participants. Priority list must assess individual interest, influence, and level of participation in your project. One example of how to do this is with the power interest grid, your stakeholders into four categories as shown in fig1.  

The first grid is a high power, high interest. These are the most critical stakeholders to satisfy, and they must be involved to gain mileage in implementing a plan. The second is a high power, low interest; these stakeholders have a lot of influence but not a strong interest in your project. They should be kept in the loop but with limited communication. The third is low power high interest; these stakeholders do not have much influence but are still affected by the project’s decisions and outcome. Entrepreneurs ensure that they have no significant issues with projects and address their concerns as they arise. The fourth grid represents low power, low interest, and these stakeholders lack both influence and interest in your project. It’s not crucial to communicate with them regularly.

Another approach to the power interest grid is to group stakeholders into four categories: players, subject context setters, and the crowd. The players are the influential people that can make or break a project. They must be fully engaged, care a lot about a project, and offer great ideas and advice. However, managers do not need to accept every input. In other settings, heads of departments are influential but do not need to know every detail of the project. The crowd also present low priority stakeholders that will require the least amount of ongoing communication.

This day requires attention to detail for every person of interest. Perhaps it represents a critical step that every project manager must understand for the success of the project. This skill helps managers to communicate effectively with every important person involved in the project. To get the essential details, managers should build a profile for each stakeholder that answers three questions.

This day requires attention to detail for every person of interest. Perhaps it represents a critical step that every project manager must understand for the success of the project. This skill helps managers to communicate effectively with every important person involved in the project. To get the essential details, managers should build a profile for each stakeholder that answers three questions.

           – What motivates the stakeholder

           – How does the project align with their priorities, and what other preferences might they have

           – If they have a negative view of the project, what can managers do to change that.

The beauty of business models as the approach makes things explicit means that other people can react to it, comment, criticize other pieces; essentially, it becomes a living story about our innovation. We cannot afford to gamble. Innovation is all about uncertainty. Our job is to try and convert that uncertainty to managing risk. Strategic selection is very much about two key questions. Does it fit with what we know about what we are capable of what we are trying to do? And is it worth doing? There is a wonderfully wide range of tools available to help us with the selection challenges. Start-ups must get this right; they only have one big chance, one big bet. So, it makes sense for them to build a robust rich business model and express how their excellent idea can create value. That is advantageous as it gets people engaged in that discussion and reduces the risk that entrepreneurs push the market’s wrong idea. Established organizations have the additional problem of trying to balance competing projects.