Identify the stakeholders

Identify the stakeholders

Your task, as a BA, is to first identify all the stakeholders involved in this project. Each task includes a list of stakeholders who are likely to participate in the execution of that task or who will be affected by it. A stakeholder is an individual or a group that a business analyst is likely to interact with directly or indirectly.

You should conduct a thorough stakeholder analysis to identify all the stakeholders who will be directly or indirectly impacted by the project. Stakeholder analysis should be performed several times as business analysis activities continue from requirements collection to testing and sign-off. This will help ensure you have a detailed list of stakeholders and have not overlooked anyone that will be affected by your project changes.

Understanding who the stakeholders are, the impact of proposed changes on them, and the influence they may have on the change is vital to understanding what needs, wants, and expectations must be satisfied by a solution. If stakeholders are not identified, the BA may miss uncovering critical requirements that may lead to an increase in cost and induce delays.

In the first meeting as a BA, your goal is to identify key stakeholders and their roles. Below is a sample for your project.

Role	Name	Contact method
Business Analyst	You! And any other BAs helping you.	Email, phone number.
Project Sponsor	Who is paying for this project in your company?	Email, phone number.
Customer	Single point of contact for all customer requirements. Hiring Manager in this case who will post the jobs daily.	Email, phone number.
End-user	Who uses this solution daily once deployed. Hiring Manager and accounting department.	Email, phone number.
Subject Matter Expert	Domain expert from the company. It can be a human resources manager who has more knowledge on job listings, costs, hiring process, etc.	Email, phone number.
Project Manager	Who manages the project, performs estimation of cost and time, and handles project communication to higher management?	Email, phone number.
Tester	Different levels of testers from your company who will test the software before the rollout.	Email, phone number.

Most of the times, you can get a group email representing the user group. It is also advised to get at least one individual user along with a user group email.

As a BA, you will keep going back to these stakeholders for multiple reasons during the project. Having a good relationship with all the stakeholders is critical for the success of the project and for the success of you as a BA.

If you have a successful relationship with a stakeholder, he/she can go out of their way to help you get more context and clarity on the item you are working on. If there is one must-have skill you want to have as a BA, it should be your communication skills including inter-personal skills. If you want to work on this, get the evergreen book by Dale Carnegie- ‘How to win friends and influence people’. It will save you a million times during your career.

In this project, the stakeholders were identified in your first few meetings as follows.

Role	Contact
Business Analyst	[e-mail]
Project Sponsor	[e-mail]
Customer	[e-mail]
End user - Sample users of TechJobs who will use the App.	[e-mail]
Subject Matter Expert- who handles the company relationships with the clients who needs candidates.	[e-mail]
Project Manager	[e-mail]
Testers	[e-mail]
Developers	[e-mail]
UI Designers	[e-mail]

Getting this list is not easy- you need to go talk to many people back and forth, confirm with all those users and validate with them. Sometimes, the stakeholders do not know that they will have to be part of this because no one told them yet. It is possible that the team did not identify some stakeholders before starting the project- they do not have a testing team yet! Its your job as a BA to keep revising this list and keeping it up to date.