by Robert Emeka, CBAP

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Planning Stakeholder Engagement to the level required is overlooked when organizations make changes. Organizations that lead with a solution prior to engaging with stakeholders to the required level often face failure. Several estimates claim inadequate stakeholder engagement is the root cause of around 25% of project failure. Before we dive into this case study on stakeholder engagement, let us clearly define stakeholder. A stakeholder is defined as a group or individual with a relationship to the change, the need, or the solution. 

Plan Stakeholder Engagement:

This is a plan that helps the business analyst discover the stakeholders, and plan how and when to effectively communicate and collaborate with them. If a positive working relationship is established and maintained with the stakeholders in a given project, the rest of the business analysis activity is bound to be more seamless and successful. 

Required to make a successful plan:

1. Stakeholder Analysis 

Identify the stakeholders who would have a relationship with the change. There are several sources and techniques used for discovering stakeholders. How big your project is may determine a technique to be used. These techniques may include: Mind mapping, Document analysis, Brainstorming, and interviews to name a few.

A comprehensive stakeholder list ensures no stakeholders are overlooked. Identifying stakeholders, understanding the impact of proposed changes on them, and recognizing their influence is crucial for meeting their needs, wants, and expectations. Missing stakeholders may lead to missed critical needs, potentially requiring revisions to ongoing or completed business analysis tasks, resulting in increased costs and decreased satisfaction.

After identifying and creating the stakeholder list, discover their characteristics which include power of influence, attitude and the impact of the activity on them.

Ready to put your learning into practice? Download my Stakeholder Analysis template designed in Google Sheets. It's completely free and collaborative . Start capturing valuable insights today!

Analyze these characteristics using a stakeholder matrix. This enables us to determine which category to place each stakeholder. It's an essential step to ensure we aren't misallocating resources and time, which would be a waste.

Ready to put your learning into practice? Download my Stakeholder Matrix template designed in Google Drawings. It's completely free and collaborative . Start capturing valuable insights today!

Now that we know our stakeholder categories (key players, consulted partners, informational audience and supporters), we don’t need to assume anymore, we can determine how we collaborate and communicate with them. This is a necessary step as it helps keep key stakeholders in the work happy and included. 

2. Define Stakeholder Collaboration 

This is where we plan engagement of these stakeholder groups; to maintain their interest and involvement in the business analysis activities. Activities such as elicitation, requirement validation, solution evaluation, decision making can go on seamlessly when we have a good collaboration plan. In defining how to collaborate, we consider:

• timing and frequency of collaboration,

• location,

• available tools such as wikis and online communities,

• delivery method such as in-person or virtual, and

• preferences of the stakeholders

3. Stakeholder Communication Needs

Evaluate the communication needs of stakeholders such as:

• what needs to be communicated,

• what is the appropriate delivery method (written or verbal),

• who the appropriate audience is,

• when communication should occur,

• frequency of communication,

• geographic location of stakeholders who will receive communications,

• level of detail appropriate for the communication and stakeholder, and

• level of formality of communications.

For instance, in order to communicate business analysis information with key stakeholders that are located within different time zones or continents, we need to plan when communication should occur with the location of the stakeholder in mind. Also we can consider the level of details shared with different stakeholder groups.

Review and update plan. Keep in mind that this is a continuous task, there should be room for feedback and reviews to keep the plan up-to-date with the current situations.

Once a thorough job is done here, the deliverable produced could be used in performing some other BA tasks such as: Planning of Business Analysis Approach, Planning of Business Analysis Governance, Planning of Business Analysis Information Management, Preparing for Elicitation, Managing Stakeholder Collaboration, Conducting Elicitation, Communicating Business Analysis Information, Assessing Risks, Defining Change Strategy.

A Case Study - Fare or Foul: Stakeholder Analysis on an Upcoming Transit Hikes to Older Adults (inspired by a true story)

To gain a better understanding of this task, let's connect it to a real-world inspiration.

As a student on fixed income I consider large transit fare increases concerning, and can empathize with stakeholder groups like older adults which many could likely also feel this way depending on pensions and savings to live. Our case study starts off in a typical North American city, let’s call it Riverview, with the transit service proposing to double the monthly cost of a seniors' transit pass from $36 to $78, while adult passes will only raise by 20%. An increase in fare is needed to cover the increasing costs of the transit infrastructure. Given that many older adults rely on public transportation, this significant hike poses financial strain on a demographic that often has a fixed income.  This case study aims to analyze the senior stakeholder demographic and their implications for Riverview’s fare change initiative.

Taking a cue from steps discussed earlier, here’s how a typical BA can plan for stakeholder engagement and bring this change back on track. 

Step 1: Perform Stakeholder Analysis 

Create a Stakeholder List
As a typical BA, I will identify all stakeholders. Making a thorough list. Remember the definition of a stakeholder given above and think of who should be included in this list. Note that it is better to include unnecessary stakeholders than exclude or omit an important one. I feel you shouldn't worry about lean thinking here.

Technique:
Here’s some techniques you can employ in order to come up with this list. 

1. Brainstorming: Brainstorm possible stakeholders who would be interested or impacted by this change.

2. Document Review: Review previous documents related to this type of change.

3. Mind Map: Use a mind map to generate an exhaustive list of stakeholders.

These and more techniques can be performed individually or as a team, depending on the nature and size of the project. 

For the output of the session we will focus on the senior stakeholder demographic, in a real life scenario there would be many stakeholders to consider as anyone with a relationship to the change of transit fares could be considered a stakeholder.

Discover Stakeholder Characteristics:
After generating the stakeholder list, I determined each stakeholder’s characteristics. Ascertain each stakeholder’s interest or power and level of impact the change has on them.

Technique:

Possible techniques below to perform this step.

1. Interview: Use interviews to determine this from the key stakeholders.

2. Organizational Modelling: this can be used to determine these characteristics of internal stakeholders.

For the given scenario, I used openly sourced documents to determine internal Riverview stakeholders’ characteristics and interviewed some friends of various age brackets and backgrounds to determine some of the external stakeholders’ characteristics. These people are familiar with Riverview transit. Be mindful that these characteristics are not cast on stone and can change at any time during the project lifecycle.

Analyze Stakeholders
Use the stakeholder matrix template to perform stakeholder analysis. This tool analyzes each stakeholder based on their characteristics. Note how it uses different colors to differentiate each category for easy identification. This analysis focuses on seniors (65+) which is underlined in orange, remaining stakeholders are blurred out. One of the key needs identified for seniors is fixed income and budget requiring stable transportation costs. As this need is not met by the proposed solution I would flag this.

Step 2: Define Stakeholder Collaboration

I considered the stakeholder analysis to define how to engage with each stakeholder group. As the older adult group would be considered a “supporter” category, they may not have significant power, but their support can be pivotal for gaining buy-in from the wider community. We would want to ensure their interest and involvement is maintained throughout the project so finding collaborative methods that require little travel or technology could be key. Collaboration methods could include community forums, paper based surveys, walking interviews with senior walking clubs, and idea boards at the library where seniors can write down their ideas anomalously. The planned activities would be input into a stakeholder collaboration plan.

Step 3: Determine Stakeholder Communication Needs

At this point some critical items needs to be communicated such as the city requiring additional funding for transit infrastructure as well as an understanding of older adult’s budget sensitivity. Raising fares significantly could lead to a reduction in ridership, which would undermine the initiative aimed at making transit users cover a greater share of operating costs, potentially jeopardizing the entire transit system's funding. Since older adults are a substantial voting block, their backlash against these increases could influence political decisions, emphasizing the need for stakeholder analysis focused on their needs and concerns regarding accessibility and affordability in public transportation. Ultimately as a business analyst we would recommend a more modest increase in seniors fares to be fair.

Who else do you think could be impacted by this project? Give it a try by identifying and analyzing another potential stakeholder.

Conclusion

In conclusion, planning stakeholder engagement is a crucial step and can be complex especially when there is an increased number of stakeholders involved for obvious reasons. Care should be taken when performing this task as many other tasks listed above rely on its output.

The plan, when implemented, should meet the needs of the target audience, align with company goals, and receive the necessary support for successful launch and adoption of the BA work.