What is a Stakeholder Map?
Stakeholder mapping is an effective tool to help you understand who your key stakeholders are and what their relationship is to your end user. Use it to define and agree on your stakeholders and to analyse them by impact and influence.
Why are they useful?
During the discover phase of a project it’s important to get a shared understanding of your key stakeholders and what influence they have on your end user. It’s useful when planning research to ensure you get multiple perspectives on the problem you’re looking to solve.
How to use a Stakeholder Map
Place your end user in the centre of the map. If this is unknown, you can use the challenge topic. List all the stakeholders who come into contact with that end user – placing the ones who are more influential closer to the centre, and those stakeholders who have less influence further away.
Tips
- Splitting the map into two can be helpful when dealing with a complex topic.
- This enables you to cluster your stakeholders around a particular theme, for example internal and external.
