Stakeholder management

One of the key responsibilities of a Business Analyst (BA) when participating in a project is managing stakeholders (stakeholder management) and planning work for them.

1. Identifying Stakeholder

Stakeholders are all the people involved in the project. They can be those directly working on the project, such as the PM, developers, testers, or even other BAs. Stakeholders also include clients, decision-making leaders, or other departments indirectly involved in the project, such as QC or legal.

As a BA, you need to identify all parties involved in the project or analysis process. A stakeholder register is a useful tool to help you manage this list. It's a detailed record of project stakeholders, including their names, positions, contact information, perspectives, and influence levels.

2. Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis is the process of clarifying the desires, requirements, goals, and perspectives of stakeholders regarding the project. This allows BAs to be more proactive when eliciting requirements or exchanging information with them.

During the requirement analysis process, you can use two types of diagrams: the stakeholder classification matrix or the stakeholder onion diagram to illustrate the level of interest and influence each stakeholder has on the project.

3. Defining the Working Process

After the steps above, you'll have information about stakeholders, including their roles, responsibilities, authority, and influence. This is when you should sit down with the project manager or BA team to define the requirement workflow among stakeholders.

The working process can be represented as an activity diagram that describes the interaction process within the project, such as: BA gathering requirements from clients, processing requirements, confirming requirements, transferring requirements to other parties, updating requirements, etc.

Along with the working process diagram, use a RACI Matrix. The RACI Matrix is an excellent tool to clearly define stakeholder roles and responsibilities, including: Responsible (the person who does the work), Accountable (the person who approves the work), Consulted (the person who is consulted), and Informed (the person who is kept informed).

4. Stakeholder Planning & Communication

Based on the collected and analyzed information, the BA creates a plan for meetings to discuss and gather requirements from clients. This plan includes information such as meeting dates and times, topics discussed in each meeting, participants, meeting methods, and location.

The plan needs to be agreed upon by all participating stakeholders before implementation. During the execution of the plan, the BA needs to continuously update the status and track progress to adjust the plan according to the actual situation.

Commonly used tools include communication plans and stakeholder management plans.