The Ultimate Guide to Stakeholder Mapping: Creating a Complete Stakeholder Map

Stakeholder mapping is one of the most important processes in project management. This complete guide covers everything you need to know about creating a detailed stakeholder map template, including why it's important, the different types of stakeholders, examples of maps, and a step-by-step process for building your own.

What is a Stakeholder Map and Why is it So Important for Project Success?

A stakeholder map is a visual diagram and representation of all the people, groups, and organizations who have an interest, stake, or influence in a project. It's one of the most essential tools used in stakeholder analysis and management. 

Properly mapping your stakeholders is critical for ensuring effective stakeholder engagement, promoting stakeholder buy-in, managing expectations, reducing risks, and driving overall project success. That's why stakeholder mapping helps identify all project stakeholders, prioritizes them, and creates a strategic stakeholder engagement plan.

Stakeholder Mapping Helps Identify All Project Stakeholders

The first step in mapping stakeholders is to identify all potential internal and external stakeholders regardless of their current influence, interest, or role on the project. This involves brainstorming all groups and people who are impacted by, or can impact the success of your project.

Stakeholders can include anyone from your project team, leaders, various departments in your organization, investors, customers, partners, vendors, government agencies, industry associations, pressure groups or adjacent communities. Some examples of key stakeholder groups include:

Internal Stakeholder Examples

• Employees at all levels

• Executives like CEO and Leadership Team

• Various organizational departments such as Finance, Marketing, Product, Engineering etc.

• Shared Services teams like HR, IT, Legal etc.

• Board Members or owners

• Project Management Team including Project Manager, team members from departments working on the initiatives

External Stakeholder Examples

• Current, past and potential future customers or clients

• Investors, shareholders, venture capitalists, lenders

• Suppliers, vendors, contractors, and partners

• Industry analysts and media

• Various vertical industry groups and associations

• Government regulators and agencies

• Local community members and groups

• Unions and worker groups

• Political groups and spokespeople

The key is to broadly consider all parties that have an interest or stake in your project's success and outcomes. Every group matters, even if their current influence or interest seems low. Stakeholders can change over time or emerge later, catching you by surprise if they weren't mapped early.

Stakeholder Mapping Helps You Prioritize Stakeholders

With your full list of project stakeholders, the next step is to analyze their attributes like their power and influence over the direction and outcomes of the project. You also assess their interest level in the project itself or its benefits.

By rating stakeholder's influence from low to high, and assessing their interest level, you can start prioritizing communication and engagement efforts with different stakeholders.

This involves a simple quadrant mapping approach:

• High interest, high influence stakeholders = Highest priority for engagement

• High interest but low influence groups = Keep well informed with updates

• Low interest but high influence = Keep satisfied as supporters even if less directly involved 

• Low interest and low influence groups = Can simply be monitored at a lower touchpoint 

This method makes it easy to focus deeper relationship building, communication, and engagement efforts on the stakeholders that have the highest power and interest, which typically includes:

• Project leadership like sponsors

• Core project team members

• Key end users and customers

• Important partners, agencies or expert groups

This saves you time by clarifying which groups need the most interaction and input versus lower priority groups that just need updates or simple monitoring.

Stakeholder Mapping Enables an Engagement Strategy

The core goal of mapping stakeholders is to enable effective management and engagement strategies tailored to each stakeholder group. Different stakeholders have diverse needs, communication preferences, goals and influence. Mapping helps segment groups so you can customize engagement.

Tactics can range from high-touch for key stakeholders -- like regular project meetings, advisory panels, design input sessions -- to low touch updates through emails and reports for lower influence groups.

This matrix approach prevents you from just using a single generic communication plan. By drafting a targeted plan for stakeholder clusters and roles, you can best manage diverse needs and promote support critical for shared success.

Stakeholder Mapping Reduces Project Risk

Another key benefit of mapping stakeholders thoroughly early on is identifying any higher influence groups who might resist, block or negatively impact the project if their needs aren't addressed proactively.

By highlighting potential issues early from a thorough map and analysis, you can develop mitigation actions like engagement tactics to reduce risks of roadblocks later on when it's harder to change course. This prevents countless headaches.

You also might uncover new potential partners, allies or supporters you weren't aware of previously by thoroughly mapping interest groups related to your work.

Stakeholder Mapping Drives Buy-In

Perhaps most importantly, consistent and tailored stakeholder engagement creates buy-in. When groups feel heard, respected and involved at the right level, they naturally become supportive of initiatives, especially if they will also benefit in some way. 

The stakeholder mapping process combined with strategic engagement helps ensure you gather feedback to evolve plans, while also educating stakeholders early on about pending changes. This seeding reduces resistance down the road.

In the end, buy-in across your key stakeholders converts them into advocates, ambassadors and accomplices willing to help drive success instead of barriers deterring progress. But it requires understanding nuanced needs through robust stakeholder mapping to enable genuine connections.

Types of Stakeholder Maps

Now that we’ve covered the importance and key goals of stakeholder mapping, let’s explore a few formats you can follow to map your own stakeholders.

The core method involves a quadrant or grid to position groups based on their influence and interest ratings, but you can expand on this model.

Grid Model

The most popular approach is a basic grid with x/y axis representing influence vs. interest ratings, and stakeholders placed into four quadrants as groups or individual names. The size of their shape/text represents influence with larger for higher power. Color coding groups also helps visualize and call out clusters clearly.

Concentric Circles Model

Another method is to position groups in larger or smaller concentric circles again based on their influence, with the inner circle holding high influence stakeholders. Arrows can depict information flows and needs.

Relationship Model

Or expand on the grid to depict relationships between stakeholders using connecting lines or arrows showing how different groups interrelate or depend on each other. Useful for more complex projects.

Group Model 

For stakeholder groups versus specific people, you can simply create columns with clustered stakeholder segments like Internal, Partners, Agencies etc. Useful for identifying broad communication needs tied to clusters versus nuanced individual stakeholder needs.

There is no one right or wrong format. Choose whichever makes the relationships and priorities easier to digest at a glance depending on the complexity of dependencies and volume of stakeholders. Test some options to see which model best suits your needs and audience.

Step-by-Step Process to Create Your Own Stakeholder Map

Now let’s walk through the process for creating your own tailored stakeholder map, analysis and engagement plan.

Step 1: Identify a List of All Potential Stakeholders

Use brainstorming, expert consultants, research, and interview techniques to compile an exhaustive master list of every potential stakeholder group related to your project. 

Cast a wide net at this phase looking at direct project participants but also peripheral parties related to project impacts downstream or who might have adjacent priorities. Eliminate assumptions by including any group that could influence outcomes for conservatism even if influence seems low for now.

Step 2: Research and Analyze Key Attributes Per Stakeholder

For each identified stakeholder, collect intel and attributes which will help prioritize later and customize engagement. Useful data fields might include:

• Stakeholder group name and description

• Key contacts

• Anticipated level of interest in the project itself (low/med/high)

• Anticipated influence level over project direction and outcomes (low/med/high)

• Desired benefit or expected outcomes from project

• Potential negative outcomes, risks or concerns

• Level of support/opposition currently

• Key dependencies with other stakeholders or project components

• Preferred communications channels

This research will guide your mapping, planning and engagement process after consolidating findings on your stakeholders’ relative influence/interest/needs.

Step 3: Plot Stakeholders on a Grid by Influence and Interest

With research complete, plot each stakeholder on a grid matrix based on their anticipated influence on outcomes across the x-axis, and level of interest for the project itself on the y-axis.

Size each data point by the degree if influence using bigger or smaller circles as a visual cue. This creates your four quadrants from earlier models, segmenting by:

• High interest / High Influence

• High Interest / Low Influence

• Low Interest / High Influence 

• Low Interest / Low Influence

You now have your stakeholders mapped based on these two critical attributes, clarifying priority groups for engagement vs. simple monitoring.

Step 4: Document Your Stakeholder Matrix Table

While the map is an excellent visual aid, document detailed findings in an accompanying stakeholder matrix table for reference, reporting and planning.

In Excel or other formats, create columns to capture all of the research around relationships, influence, interest, expectations and other attributes allowing sorting and filtering. This becomes your master reference document around managing stakeholders as a live record.

Step 5: Draft a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy and Plan

Leverage your mapped quadrants and matrix details to make a tailored stakeholder engagement plan matrix identifying tactics per group. Useful columns include:

• Stakeholder cluster

• Engagement approach/ tactics

• Frequency of communication 

• Key messages and needs

• Responsible parties

This translates your mapping into an actionable communications and engagement roadmap catered to how different groups consume and desire information or input opportunities.

Step 6: Operationalize the Plan and Refine Over Time

Activate your stakeholder engagement plan by continually communicating and managing relationships as defined for each group in your strategy. Treat it as a living approach, refining over time if nuances emerge or changes call for some stakeholders to increase or decrease involvement to meet evolving needs.

Stakeholder Map Template and Example

To make this process for creating a stakeholder map easier, let's walk through an example focused on launching a new software application at a B2B tech company.

Project Background

AlphaTech Inc. is preparing to launch a new business intelligence and data analytics application for the enterprise market supporting data-driven decision making through dashboards, AI and big data integrations.

The Product and Engineering teams are owners of designing and building the application itself, while the Go-To-Market teams including Marketing, Sales and Alliances will handle bringing the product to customers.

Below is an example stakeholder map created using the research and grid modeling approach:

Key Details

• All quadrants have identified stakeholders by group or name

• Circle size represents degree of influence with larger for most influential like CEO

• Power/Interest grid forms basis for engagement strategy 

You can observe from the placements:

• Leadership, customers and project teams are top priority clusters

• Groups like Marketing will require input gathering nearly as often given enablement duties

• Partners have mid-level priority since they’ll be co-selling products soon 

• Analysts wield influence via market opinions even if low direct interest so are kept satisfied

Using this map, AlphaTech creates a stakeholder matrix table and launches a multi-channel ongoing communications plan catered to the various quadrant needs at relevant cadences to drive success.

Key Takeaways & Next Steps

Stakeholder mapping, research and planning is a critical process for driving effective engagement, managing expectations, creating buy-in and reducing risks on complex projects.

By identifying all potential stakeholders, evaluating levels of interest and influence, plotting groups and priorities on a grid model, and creating data and action plans, you set the stage for shared success.

Next steps to build your own productive stakeholder management approach include: 

• List your stakeholders: Brainstorm an exhaustive list of all parties impacted by your project regardless of current influence using the typical stakeholder examples covered earlier as reference.

• Research key attributes per group: Dig deeper via research, expert input, interviews etc. on the level of influence, interest, needs, concerns etc. per stakeholder cluster to inform later prioritization and engagement design.

• Map stakeholders by influence and interest: With attributes understood, plot groups on an influence/interest grid to visualize who warrants closer engagement vs. simpler monitoring and communication.

• Draft detailed stakeholder data table: Document the full set of research, relationships between parties, priority ratings and other findings into a master stakeholder matrix as your source of truth.

• Create tailored engagement strategies: Develop customized engagement plan for clusters of stakeholders defining applicable tactics, needs and cadences based on staffing and resources available.

• Launch, refine and sustain focus: Continually engage per your stakeholder mapping plan, iterating regularly to adapt to changes over long projects and product lifecycles.

Investing in intentional stakeholder mapping and management is one of the highest leverage activities leaders can undertake to reduce friction, promote buy-in, gather input, and proactively identify risks.

Hopefully this complete guide and template empowers your own success leveraging stakeholder intelligence, analysis and strategy tailored to your unique project needs.