A Simple Guide to Stakeholders Identification

 

When we start the walk along the road “to translate” a business need into action we need to identify the key person/people who will guide us. This activity is well known as Stakeholder Identification. The activity must be performed from the very beginning.

By definition, Stakeholder is “person or organization whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by the solution or the process to generate the solution”. The key word is “affected” because this situation will generate positive or negative attitude so we must start a management strategy as soon as possible.

To identify Stakeholders and do not forget some stakeholders (I hope :)) I have used this technique and I think it will help you when you perform this task:

From the point of view of Organizational Systemic Concept you can see an organization as an open and adaptable system which is comprised by components and its relations. Components could be people, buildings, process, software, mission and vision statements, etc. If you put your focus on Enterprise Architecture components you could find each person or organization affected by the endeavor that the organization is going to take.

Enterprise Architecture components are:

-Business Architecture or Layer (BA): place where business components belongs (mission, vision, business process, etc.)

-Application Architecture or Layer (AA): every software component which helps business architecture components to perform their functions.

-Technology Architecture or Layer (TA): every technology component which helps application architecture components to perform their functions.

-Security Architecture or Layer (SA): helps other architecture components to maintain integrity.

-Information Architecture or Layer (IA): helps to transform events which occurs in other architectures into information to help decision support.

Hope this help you and please remember all your comments are welcome :)