Stakeholder Map Template
Understand the people who have influence over your projects, so you can get their support.
About the Stakeholder Map template
What is stakeholder mapping?
Stakeholder mapping is a way of organizing all of the people who have an interest in your product, project, or idea in a single visual space. This allows you to easily see who can influence your project, and how each person is related to the other.
Widely used in project management, stakeholder mapping / stakeholder analysis is typically performed at the beginning of a project. Doing stakeholder mapping early on will help prevent miscommunication, ensure all groups are aligned on the objectives and set expectations about outcomes and results.
Why is stakeholder mapping so important?
Imagine you’re starting on a new project and want it to be as successful as possible. Who should you involve? Who should you keep updated? Who is likely to have questions or objections? These are all important questions that can arise as a project progresses, and which may lead to a phrase being derailed or delayed. Here are three benefits of stakeholder mapping:
Define your projects well
Stakeholders aren’t just your allies – they can also deliver insights and advice that help you shape your project. When you involve a diverse group of stakeholder from the start, they will help you create the best outline and plan for your project that will set it up for success.
Create a shared understanding
Once you understand who your stakeholders are, you can communicate early and often to develop a shared understanding of your project. If they grasp the benefits, they are more likely to support you down the line.
Secure resources
Often, stakeholders are the ones who hold the purse strings or have the necessary influence for getting you the resources you need. A stakeholder map will help you identify these individuals more easily.
3 examples of a stakeholder map
You can use stakeholder mapping to understand the key players who can influence your project. Here are three examples of who you might involve in different types of projects.
Product launch (retail)
When entering a new market or launching a new product, your stakeholders might include:
Retailers
Suppliers
Management
Financial institutions
Business consultants
Product launch (software)
As part of the software product development process, you may involve a number of stakeholders such as:
Product manager
Developers
Marketers
Executive sponsor
Designers
Public sector project
If you’re working in the public sector, you could have a broad range of stakeholders to work with, including:
Business groups
Elected representatives
Local councils
Courts
Trade unions
The media
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Production Workflow
Whether you’re producing a podcast, a marketing campaign, a TV show, or a piece of content, establishing a production workflow is crucial. A production workflow creates a visual guide to the different steps in a process. It can be used to train new team members or give a high-level overview to stakeholders. Although production workflows vary by team and business, they generally contain information about who the stakeholders are, how you brainstorm ideas, what your timeline looks like, and what resources you need to succeed.
Service Blueprint
First introduced by G. Lynn Shostack in 1984, service blueprints allow you to visualize the steps that go into a service process from the customer’s perspective. Service blueprints are useful tools for understanding and designing a service experience – and finding ways to improve it. Service blueprint diagrams make it simpler for teams to design new processes or improve existing ones. To create a service blueprint, map out each process and actor that contributes to the customer experience, from in-house contributors to third-party vendors.
SAFe Program
Many organizations use the Agile model, but even companies that don’t rigorously adhere to all Agile standards have adopted Agile tools and methods like Program Increment (PI) Planning. Even if you’re not participating in a formal PI session, a program board can be a great way to establish communication across teams and stakeholders, align development objectives with business goals, clarify dependencies, and foster cross-functional collaboration. The board provides much-needed structure to planning sessions, yet is adaptable enough to accommodate brainstorming and alignment meetings.
Opportunity Solution Tree
Solving problems — successful companies and productive teams just know how to do it. They’re able to identify many possible solutions, then settle on the one that leads to the desired outcome. That’s the power an Opportunity Solution Tree gives you. Designed by Teresa Torres, a product discovery coach, this mind map breaks down your desired outcome into opportunities for the product to meet user needs, then gives your team an effective way to brainstorm potential solutions.
Working Backwards
Amazon pioneered the working backwards approach based on one of their key principles: celebrating customer obsession. Working backwards is a framework for thinking about a product without a detailed roadmap. Your product team would work back from a mental image of the customer to launch your product in a way that truly serves them. The method requires anyone with a new product or feature idea to articulate its objective as clearly as possible.. If the idea presentation impresses leadership, the next step is to map out what the team needs in order to get to the product or feature launch.
Communications Plan
You saw the opportunity. You developed the product. Now comes an important step: Find your audience and speak to them in a way that’s clear, memorable, and inspiring. You need a communications plan—a strategy for controlling your narrative at every stage of your business—and this template will help you create a good one. No need to build a new strategy every time you have something to communicate. Here, you can simplify the process, streamline your messaging, and empower you to communicate in ways that grow with your business.