What is a Stakeholder Analysis?
A stakeholder analysis is a structured process used to identify, categorize, and better understand the people or groups who have an interest in, or are affected by, a project or initiative. It goes beyond simply naming your stakeholders—it helps you evaluate their level of influence, their needs, their potential support or resistance, and how best to engage them throughout your project.
In a higher education context, where collaboration is often cross-functional and decision-making can be decentralized, stakeholder analysis can be critical for gaining buy-in, building trust, and setting your project up for long-term success.
What are the benefits of a Stakeholder Analysis?
Conducting a stakeholder analysis early in the project lifecycle offers several advantages:
- Clarity: It provides a clear picture of who needs to be involved and what their roles or concerns might be.
- Better Communication: Knowing your audience helps you tailor your messages and updates to the right people in the right way.
- Anticipated Challenges: You can proactively identify potential resistance and plan strategies for addressing it.
- More Inclusive Planning: Ensures that voices across roles, departments, and identities are included in project design.
- Improved Alignment: Helps your team prioritize relationships that are most critical to achieving your milestones or advancing your charter.
For example, a team redesigning a general education curriculum might conduct a stakeholder analysis to better understand the perspectives of faculty across disciplines, academic advisors, students, and accreditation representatives.
Where might you see a Stakeholder Analysis in higher education?
A stakeholder analysis can be helpful in nearly any project where the outcomes impact a wide range of people or units. Examples include:
- Strategic planning efforts, where aligning internal and external stakeholders is key to success.
- Technology implementations, where end users (e.g., students, staff, or faculty) may have varying levels of influence and different needs.
- Policy development or revision, where input and approval are needed from governance groups or senior leaders.
- Change initiatives, where understanding the interests of different groups helps reduce resistance and support successful adoption.
- Grant planning, where clearly mapping stakeholders can improve proposal clarity and implementation.
A step-by-step guide to conducting a Stakeholder Analysis
- Start by brainstorming everyone who is involved in, impacted by, or could influence the project. Include both individuals and groups in this stakeholder identification. Think broadly—students, faculty, staff, alumni, community partners, or even external regulators.
- Use a stakeholder matrix to plot each stakeholder by their level of influence (power to impact the project) and interest (degree to which they care about the outcome). Categories may include:
- High influence / high interest (actively engage)
- High influence / low interest (keep satisfied)
- Low influence / high interest (keep informed)
- Low influence / low interest (monitor occasionally)
- Consider each stakeholder’s priorities, what success looks like to them, and how they prefer to receive information.
- Use your stakeholder analysis to define how and when each group will be engaged. This might inform your dashboard, meetings, emails, or feedback processes.
- Incorporate your analysis into the project’s planning documents—such as the resource management plan or prioritization framework—and revisit it periodically as stakeholder dynamics shift.
Reflective questions
- Have you ever formally mapped out stakeholders for a project? What insights did you gain?
- How do you currently decide who to include—or not include—in your project conversations?
- What’s one upcoming initiative where a stakeholder analysis would improve engagement or alignment?
- Could stakeholder analysis help reduce delays or resistance in your work?
- How might you use stakeholder analysis to ensure equity and inclusion in project design?
- How could your findings shape the project’s scope, communication plan, or sponsor engagement?