How to Do a Stakeholder Analysis
A practical step-by-step guide to identifying stakeholders, assessing influence, impact, and disposition, interpreting the results, and using a template to stay organized.
Stakeholder analysis helps you understand who can affect an initiative, who will be affected by it, and where attention should focus first. It is useful for projects, transformations, system implementations such as ERP, CRM, and cloud platforms, process changes, operating model shifts, policy changes, and other initiatives where people, decisions, adoption, or execution matter.
The process works best when it is structured. A strong stakeholder analysis does not stop at a list of names. It records what you learn about each stakeholder, rates key dimensions consistently, highlights where attention is needed, and identifies where specific follow-up is useful.
What is Stakeholder Analysis?
Stakeholder analysis is a structured process used to identify the people, groups, or entities that can influence or be affected by an initiative. It helps you assess each stakeholder’s influence, expected impact, and current disposition, then decide where attention is needed and whether follow-up is useful.
A stakeholder analysis is not the same as a contact list. A contact list tells you who exists. A stakeholder analysis helps you decide who needs attention, why they matter, and what, if anything, should happen next. In change management, it is one of the first assessments, because almost every later decision depends on knowing who matters to the change.
Why Stakeholder Analysis Is Important
Most initiatives depend on people who control decisions, resources, adoption, expertise, or execution quality. When those people are not understood early, teams misread the stakeholder landscape and spread their attention too evenly.
It focuses attention
Not every stakeholder needs the same level of attention. The analysis helps you see where leadership time and follow-up should concentrate.
It surfaces risk earlier
Stakeholders with high influence, high impact, and resistance can slow decisions, weaken adoption, or create workarounds if their concerns go unnoticed.
It identifies allies
Supportive stakeholders with credibility and influence can help reinforce the change, address concerns, and improve peer adoption.
It creates accountability
Where follow-up is needed, a named Owner and a specific Next Action keep it from becoming a vague project-team responsibility.
When Should You Conduct a Stakeholder Analysis?
Start as soon as you understand the change well enough to shape decisions, communication, involvement, and planning. Don’t wait until training, launch, or resistance has surfaced. The earlier you understand the stakeholder landscape, the easier it is to prevent avoidable misalignment.
Start it when…
- The project scope or future state is becoming clear.
- Leadership alignment, sponsorship, or governance decisions are needed.
- Stakeholder communication will soon begin.
- Design decisions may affect roles, systems, workflows, or accountabilities.
- The initiative depends on adoption across teams, sites, or functions.
The first version is rarely final. Keep it current as the change develops, as described in Step 6.
The 6-Step Stakeholder Analysis Process
Use these six steps to move from a rough stakeholder list to a usable analysis that shows who matters, where they stand, and where attention is needed.
Define the Initiative and Scope
Start by describing what is changing and which part of the organization is affected. The scope should be clear enough that you can decide who belongs in the analysis and who does not. Stakeholder ratings depend on the scope: a stakeholder may have high impact in one phase and low impact in another.
- Describe the initiative in practical terms, not just the name of the system or project.
- Define the functions, business areas, locations, or sites included.
- Name major areas explicitly outside scope.
- Note assumptions and unresolved decisions that could change the stakeholder landscape.
- Decide whether you are assessing one phase, region, or group, or the full initiative.
If the change itself is not yet clear, start with establishing the case for change.
Identify and Understand the Stakeholders
Build a credible stakeholder list and learn enough about each stakeholder to rate them. These activities happen together: the same interview that uncovers an overlooked group may show it has real informal influence.
- Use more than one discovery method: project and document review, process and handoff tracing, decision and approval tracing, dependency tracing, interviews and stakeholder referrals, discovery workshops, and organization structure review.
- Don’t rely on the org chart alone. It shows formal structure, not informal influence, dependencies, or external stakeholders.
- Build outward from what you learn until new discovery mostly confirms the list rather than uncovering whole new areas.
- Assess a group when its members have a similar relationship to the change. Split it when you would rate them differently or take different follow-up actions.
- Record where your information came from, and make uncertainty visible in Notes when it matters.
Keep the two key fields distinct. Stakeholder is the person or group being assessed. Group is a standardized organizational or functional category, such as Finance or Executive Leadership, used to organize and filter the wider stakeholder landscape. For example, Plant Controllers is the stakeholder and Finance is the group. The questions below help with both identifying and understanding stakeholders.
Assess Influence, Impact, and Disposition
Rate each stakeholder from 1 to 5 on Influence, Impact, and Disposition, using the same definitions for everyone. The scoring guide below gives the full scales. Note where each rating came from, especially when it is uncertain.
Interpret the Results
Read Quadrant, Priority, and Risk together with the Notes rather than relying on any one of them. See how each one works.
- Check the reason behind each Risk flag before deciding what to do.
- A high Priority isn’t an instruction to act, and a Not Flagged stakeholder isn’t necessarily unimportant.
- Look for patterns across the whole analysis: where High and Medium Risk stakeholders concentrate, whether Key Allies sit where concerns are strongest, and whether highly impacted groups are being pushed down the Priority ranking.
Determine Follow-Up
Owner and Next Action are optional. Use them when the analysis identifies a specific follow-up that would be useful:
- An important rating is uncertain.
- A stakeholder concern needs to be understood.
- A decision or approval needs attention.
- A relationship or dependency needs clarifying.
- A Key Ally can help in a specific way.
- New information is needed before the analysis can be interpreted confidently.
If there’s no clear reason for follow-up, leave the fields blank. A Key Ally doesn’t automatically need an action either: use the label as information, and involve the stakeholder only when there is a specific reason.
Write the Next Action as the next practical move. “Confirm which local month-end reports must be replaced before the design is finalized” is useful. “Follow up on regional reporting concerns” is not. Assign an Owner, ideally a role rather than a name, only when there is follow-up to own.
The purpose is not to build an engagement plan inside the analysis. Engagement, communication, and support planning come later, once the Change Impact Assessment clarifies what is changing for each group and the Change Management Strategy and Plan is developed.
Maintain the Analysis
Stakeholder conditions change. A neutral group may become supportive once its concerns are answered. A supportive sponsor may become less visible after a leadership change. A low-impact group may become high impact when scope expands.
- Revisit the analysis when the change or the stakeholder situation shifts: scope changes, major decisions, leadership changes, new stakeholders, or clear changes in support or concern.
- Change only the rating that has actually changed.
- Look for a real shift in position before changing Disposition, not a single difficult meeting.
- Review completed Next Actions and what they revealed.
- Protect sensitive notes and avoid broadly sharing raw individual ratings.
Get the Free Stakeholder Analysis Practitioner Guide
This page gives you the process. The Practitioner Guide goes deeper into the judgment behind each step, with worked examples from a completed cloud ERP stakeholder analysis.
- Discovery methods for finding the stakeholders the org chart misses
- How to rate consistently and avoid common rating biases
- How to read Quadrant, Priority, Risk, and the patterns across the analysis
- When follow-up is worth it, and how to write a useful Next Action
Enter your email address to get your copy.
How to Score Influence, Impact, and Disposition
Scoring makes the analysis easier to compare, but each score needs a clear basis. Use a 1–5 scale for each dimension. For Influence and Impact, a higher rating means more. For Disposition, a higher rating means more favorable. Start each note with where the information came from, such as a discovery interview or the project scope.
Influence Scoring
Influence is the stakeholder’s ability to shape decisions, resources, opinion, or the outcome of the change. Do not score influence by title alone. Influence can come from formal authority, expertise, control of local resources, or the trust of colleagues.
| Score | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minimal | Little or no ability to shape decisions, direction, resources, opinions, or outcomes. |
| 2 | Low | Limited input or informal influence within a relatively small area. |
| 3 | Moderate | Can meaningfully influence decisions, opinions, or implementation within their area. |
| 4 | High | Strong authority, credibility, reach, or access to decision-makers; can significantly affect outcomes. |
| 5 | Critical | Can approve, block, redirect, fund, or substantially determine the success of the change. |
Impact Scoring
Impact is an estimate of how much the change affects the stakeholder’s work. The rating is directional and is not a substitute for a Change Impact Assessment. Revisit it if the Change Impact Assessment or other new information changes the estimate.
| Score | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minimal | Little or no change to work, responsibilities, processes, systems, or behaviors. |
| 2 | Low | Limited change affecting a relatively small part of the stakeholder’s work or experience. |
| 3 | Moderate | Noticeable change requiring adjustment to processes, responsibilities, behaviors, tools, or ways of working. |
| 4 | High | Significant change affecting major aspects of how work is performed or experienced. |
| 5 | Major | Extensive or fundamental change to responsibilities, processes, systems, behaviors, or operating environment. |
Disposition Scoring
Disposition is where the stakeholder stands on the change today. Higher ratings are more favorable. Base it on observed behavior, stated concerns, credible feedback, or what you learned in discovery. If you use Neutral as a temporary working rating because you don’t yet know a stakeholder’s position, say so in Notes and revisit it. Unknown and Neutral are not the same thing.
| Score | Disposition | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Resistant | Actively opposes or pushes back on the change. |
| 2 | Skeptical | Has concerns, doubts, or reservations about the change but is not opposed to it. |
| 3 | Neutral | Neither clearly supportive nor resistant. |
| 4 | Supportive | Generally positive about the change and likely to cooperate. |
| 5 | Advocate | Actively supports the change and will promote, champion, or influence others in support of it. |
The difference between Skeptical and Resistant matters. A stakeholder who questions whether the approach will work is not automatically Resistant: concern and criticism can be legitimate and useful. Resistant means pushing back on the change itself.
Do Not Score to Force a Preferred Result
Ratings should reflect what you have learned. If the results look surprising, review the assumptions and notes behind the ratings instead of changing ratings to make the dashboard look better.
How the Influence/Impact Grid, Priority, and Risk Work
The 2×2 grid uses Influence and Impact to place stakeholders into four quadrants. High means a rating of 4 or 5. The grid helps you match attention to the stakeholder situation instead of treating every stakeholder the same.
Keep Satisfied
High Influence but lower Impact. They can shape decisions without being much affected themselves, so their views are often formed secondhand. A Skeptical or Resistant stakeholder here can quietly hold the change back.
Manage Closely
Strong Influence combined with significant Impact. They can shape the outcome and are meaningfully affected by it, which is why resistance here matters most.
Monitor
Lower on both. Watch for changes in their Influence, Impact, or position as the scope develops. If almost everyone lands here, check for clustered ratings or missing key players.
Keep Informed
Lower Influence but high Impact. They may have little say over the design, but the change lands heavily on their work. Concerns here rarely block decisions but can undermine adoption.
Quadrant is useful for orientation. It does not determine a complete engagement strategy, so read it alongside Priority, Risk, and the Notes.
How Priority Works
Priority is Influence × Impact, from 1 to 25. It ranks stakeholders against each other, but equal scores can describe very different situations. In the example below, the CFO (Influence 5 × Impact 2) and the General Ledger Accountants (Influence 2 × Impact 5) both have a Priority of 10. She can shape the program but her own work changes little, while their daily work changes most. They should not automatically receive the same attention.
How Risk Works
Risk combines all three ratings to flag stakeholder situations that may need attention.
| Risk | Applies When |
|---|---|
| High | Disposition is Resistant or Skeptical (1–2), with Influence 4–5 and Impact 4–5. |
| Medium | Disposition is Resistant or Skeptical (1–2) with either Influence or Impact at 4–5; or Disposition is Neutral (3) with both Influence and Impact at 4–5. |
| Key Ally | Disposition is Supportive or Advocate (4–5), with Influence 4–5. Impact does not need to be high. |
| Not Flagged | None of the above. That doesn’t mean the stakeholder has no issues or needs no attention. |
Risk is an attention flag, not a complete interpretation. Two stakeholders can share the same Risk for different reasons, and the right conversation with each may be very different.
Stakeholder Analysis Example: Cloud ERP Implementation
A stakeholder analysis should make the process concrete. The rows below come from the completed cloud ERP example in the Change Adaptive template, where an organization is replacing several legacy finance and procurement systems with a single cloud ERP platform.
| Stakeholder | Group | Location | Influence | Impact | Disposition | Quadrant | Priority | Risk | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maria Lopez, CFO | Executive Leadership | Corporate HQ | 5 | 2 | 5 – Advocate | Keep Satisfied | 10 | Key Ally | Change Lead |
| EMEA Finance Leads | Finance | Europe | 4 | 4 | 1 – Resistant | Manage Closely | 16 | High | Finance Transformation Lead |
| Procurement Director | Procurement | Corporate HQ | 4 | 4 | 3 – Neutral | Manage Closely | 16 | Medium | Project Director |
| General Ledger Accountants | Finance | Shared Services Center | 2 | 5 | 3 – Neutral | Keep Informed | 10 | Not Flagged | Training Lead |
The Procurement Director is Medium Risk not because of opposition, but because an influential, highly affected stakeholder hasn’t decided yet. The CFO and the General Ledger Accountants show the Priority point made above.
Use the Template Behind This Example
The Example tab in the Change Adaptive Stakeholder Analysis Template holds the full cloud ERP analysis: 28 stakeholders across 12 groups, with notes showing where each rating came from. Enter your own stakeholders, and the template calculates Quadrant, Priority, and Risk and builds a Dashboard as you work, in Excel or Google Sheets.
Stakeholder Analysis Questions to Ask
Use discovery questions to identify stakeholders, understand influence, estimate impact, understand disposition, and decide whether follow-up is needed. The goal is not to ask every question. The goal is to ask the questions that reveal who matters and why.
Questions to identify stakeholders
- Who can approve, delay, redirect, fund, or stop the initiative?
- Who owns the process, system, policy, data, customer experience, or outcome being changed?
- Which teams or roles will experience the most visible change to their work?
- Who will receive more work, exceptions, questions, or support requests?
- Who will be affected downstream by changes to handoffs, reporting, data, timing, or decisions?
- Which external parties, customers, vendors, regulators, or partners could be affected?
Questions to assess influence
- Who controls resources, staffing, timing, policy, access, or approvals?
- Whose support is assumed but not yet tested?
- Who has informal credibility even without formal authority?
- Who can create exceptions, slow compliance, or allow workarounds?
- Who do others go to for advice, interpretation, or troubleshooting?
- Whose visible support would increase confidence in the initiative?
Questions to estimate impact
Keep Impact at the level of an estimate. Detailed task and process changes belong in the Change Impact Assessment.
- Whose day-to-day work will this change touch, and how much of it?
- Will the change be felt every day, or mainly at certain times?
- Is it a small adjustment for this group or a different way of working?
- How many people in each group will feel it?
- Which groups may need to be split because the change affects them differently?
- Does the stakeholder expect less change than the project does?
Questions to assess disposition
- Who is already supportive, skeptical, neutral, or resistant?
- What concerns are stakeholders raising about value, timing, feasibility, trust, workload, or risk?
- Where is silence a sign of low awareness rather than true neutrality?
- Who may be withholding concerns because the setting does not feel safe?
- What past project experiences may shape current reaction?
- What have we actually heard or seen that supports the current rating?
Questions to decide follow-up
- Is there an important rating we’re unsure about?
- Is there a concern we don’t yet understand?
- Does a decision or approval need attention?
- Is there a relationship or dependency we need to clarify?
- Can a Key Ally help with a specific issue?
- If we follow up, what exactly is the next move, and who should own it?
Questions to validate the analysis
- Are any important stakeholders missing because they are not on the org chart?
- Are broad groups split only when different treatment would change the analysis or action?
- Do the ratings reflect what we’ve learned rather than title, assumptions, or optimism?
- Where follow-up is needed, is the Next Action specific, and does it have an Owner?
- Have sensitive ratings and notes been protected appropriately?
- What new information would change the analysis?
Who Are Stakeholders?
A stakeholder is any person, group, team, function, organization, or external party that can influence an initiative, be affected by it, support it, resist it, govern it, enable it, or create risk for it. Stakeholders can be individuals, such as an executive sponsor, or groups, such as frontline users in a specific location.
Sponsors and executives
People who fund, approve, prioritize, escalate, or publicly sponsor the initiative.
Functional leaders
Leaders who own affected processes, teams, customers, systems, policies, metrics, or decisions.
Affected teams
Roles or groups whose work, tools, handoffs, responsibilities, decisions, measures, or experience may change.
Managers and supervisors
People expected to explain the change, reinforce new behaviors, answer questions, coach employees, and manage adoption locally.
Informal influencers
Trusted peers, long-tenured employees, experts, connectors, or local voices that others listen to even without formal authority.
Support and control functions
IT, HR, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Training, Communications, Data, Security, Procurement, or other groups that enable or govern the change.
External partners
Vendors, suppliers, implementation partners, consultants, regulators, unions, or third parties that influence execution or support.
Customers or end users
People outside the project team whose experience, behavior, data, service, or outcomes may be affected.
Downstream and upstream groups
Teams that provide inputs, receive outputs, depend on handoffs, or absorb the effects of changed decisions, data, timing, or controls.
Common Stakeholder Mapping Models
Stakeholder analysis can be done using several mapping models. The right model depends on what you need to decide. For practical planning, most teams need a simple way to understand influence, impact, and where attention should go.
Power / Interest Grid
Maps stakeholders by power and interest. Useful for political visibility and general project communication planning.
Salience Model
Considers power, legitimacy, and urgency. Useful when stakeholders have competing claims or escalation pressure.
Influence / Impact Grid
Maps stakeholder influence against expected impact. Useful when attention should be tied to execution, adoption, disruption, and practical change exposure.
The Change Adaptive approach uses Influence and Impact because it connects stakeholder attention to the two questions most teams need answered: who can shape the outcome, and who is likely to experience meaningful change? It then adds Disposition, so you can see where each stakeholder stands today.
Common Stakeholder Analysis Mistakes
Stakeholder analysis is simple in concept, but easy to weaken in practice. Avoid these common mistakes if you want the analysis to support real decisions.
| Mistake | Why It Hurts the Analysis | Better Practice |
|---|---|---|
| Only listing names and titles | The team cannot see who matters most or why. | Rate Influence, Impact, and Disposition, and record the basis for each rating in Notes. |
| Scoring title instead of influence | Senior people may not always be the most influential for adoption or execution. | Assess actual leverage, decision power, credibility, and adoption influence. |
| Ignoring informal influencers | Trusted peer voices may shape adoption more than formal messages. | Ask who people listen to, consult, trust, or follow in practice. |
| Using Neutral to hide uncertainty | Unknown and Neutral are not the same, so real uncertainty disappears from the analysis. | If Neutral is a temporary working rating, say so in Notes and revisit it. |
| Clustering ratings at 3 and 4 | Middle scores feel safe but blur the differences that matter. | Ask what would make each stakeholder one point higher or one point lower. |
| Not revisiting Impact as information changes | New information may change the estimate of how much the change affects the stakeholder’s work. | Revisit the Impact rating when new information changes the estimate. |
| Vague follow-up | “Follow up on concerns” doesn’t say what the conversation is for. | Where follow-up is useful, write a specific Next Action and assign an Owner. |
| Not updating the analysis | Stakeholder conditions change as decisions, timing, scope, and exposure change. | Update the affected ratings when scope, decisions, leadership, or stakeholder positions change. |
Where Stakeholder Analysis Fits in the Change Process
Stakeholder Analysis is Step 3 of the Change Adaptive change management process. It identifies who matters to the change and helps focus attention before the work moves into detailed impact assessment and planning.
Conduct Stakeholder Analysis
Current Step Who matters to this change?See the Change Management Process for the full eight-step process and how the phases work together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to list every employee in a stakeholder analysis?
No. List an individual when their authority, influence, disposition, or relationship to the change is distinct enough that grouping them with others would hide something important. Group stakeholders by role, team, function, location, site, or user group when members have a similar relationship to the change and can be assessed meaningfully together.
What is the difference between stakeholder analysis and stakeholder management?
Stakeholder analysis identifies who matters to a change, rates their influence, impact, and disposition, and shows where attention is needed. Stakeholder management uses those insights over time to guide engagement, communication, involvement, and relationship ownership.
What is the difference between influence and impact?
Influence is the stakeholder’s ability to shape decisions, resources, opinion, or the outcome of the change. Impact is an estimate of how much the change affects the stakeholder’s work. A stakeholder can have high influence and low impact, or the reverse, which is why the two are rated separately.
How should sensitive stakeholder ratings be handled?
Treat ratings and notes as sensitive working information. Keep notes factual and concise, and avoid describing personality or motives. Limit access to the people who need the working analysis, and when sharing more broadly, use patterns and themes rather than individual labels.
Can stakeholder analysis support a Change Impact Assessment?
Yes. The stakeholder list and Impact ratings can help identify areas worth examining in a Change Impact Assessment. The Change Impact Assessment still answers its own question: what will people have to do differently?
Can I do a stakeholder analysis without a template?
Yes, but a template makes the work easier to maintain and explain. It keeps ratings consistent, applies the same rules to every stakeholder, shows patterns faster, and gives you one place to record follow-up.
Turn the Process Into a Working Stakeholder Analysis
Use the Change Adaptive Stakeholder Analysis Template to rate your stakeholders, calculate Quadrant, Priority, and Risk automatically, and see on one Dashboard who needs attention first. It’s available for Excel and Google Sheets.
Want more depth on each step? Get the free Practitioner Guide →