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
Get started with this template right now. It’s free
Go to Market Strategy
It doesn’t matter how innovative or effective a new product is — if it doesn’t get noticed and adopted by the right audience, the product won’t get off the ground. That’s where your Go-to-Market Strategy comes in. It’s a single resource that houses all of your research, insights, and data, and includes your business plan, target audience, marketing approach, and sales strategy. A GTM is especially important for any startups who grow fast, have to make split-second decisions, and have to be fully in sync.
Strategic Planning
Whenever you need to define your goals and figure out the steps you’ll need to take to accomplish them, you’ll benefit from a Strategic Planning template. The Strategic Planning template guides you and your team through exercises to help you assess your current situation, determine their goals for the future, and develop a plan to help them get there. Generally, strategy considers the goals or reasons for doing something while planning refers to the specific actions you’ll take in order to achieve a specific goal. But with strategic planning, you’re considering both at the same time.
Eisenhower Matrix
Have an overwhelming list of to-dos? Prioritize them based on two key factors: urgency and importance. It worked for American president Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it can work for you—this decision-making framework will help you know where to start and how to plan your day. With our template, you can easily build an Eisenhower Matrix with a quadrant of key areas (Do, Schedule, Delegate, and Don’t Do) and revisit it throughout the day as your priorities change.
Project Status Report
A project status report is a short, timely document that keeps your project stakeholders informed and aligned on what is happening, and why. You can start writing this document on your own, then include your teammates as well to produce a timely and relevant report. A project status report should ideally compare the current state of your project against its projected plan. The report tracks on a high level how you achieve your goals, even if you experience setbacks. It’s also likely to be read by an executive-level audience controlling budgets and governance, which can help you keep the report focused on critical issues.
Action Plan
Why create an action plan? Long-term business strategies and goals are only good if you can make them a reality—by accomplishing every small task along the way. An action plan lists those tasks and lays them out in clear detail. It helps you keep everything in order, make sure nothing is missed, and get stakeholders on the same page to complete a project quickly and effectively. This template will help you write an action plan that’s SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
Project Charter
Project managers rely on project charters as a source of truth for the details of a project. Project charters explain the core objectives, scope, team members and more involved in a project. For an organized project management, charters can be useful to align everyone around a shared understanding of the objectives, strategies and deliverables for a project of any scope. This template ensures that you document all aspects of a project so all stakeholders are informed and on the same page. Always know where your project is going, its purpose, and its scope.