A food distributor is building a cold-storage extension. The design is approved, the builder is engaged and the schedule looks achievable. Four months in, work stops for three weeks: neighbours have complained to the council about night-time truck movements during the concrete pours, and the council has issued a direction. Nobody on the project had thought of the neighbours as stakeholders. Their concerns were legitimate and urgent, and through the council they turned out to have considerable power.
Projects rarely fail because the engineering is impossible. They fail, stall or overrun because someone with influence was not identified, was misread, was told too little too late, or was told too much in the wrong way. Stakeholders are the people, groups and organisations who can affect a project, or who are affected by it. They include the obvious, such as the sponsor, customers and suppliers, and the less obvious, such as neighbours, regulators, the staff whose jobs will change and the people who will maintain the result.
Most project teams make a stakeholder list. Fewer turn it into decisions about where to spend time, what each group needs to know, how their position should change and how the team will know if it has. This article explains how to identify stakeholders systematically, record them in a register, analyse them with power and interest grids and the salience model, assess their engagement, and plan communication that moves them. It is general information for project managers, engineers and owners.
Start early and look widely
Stakeholder identification belongs at the very start of a project. A stakeholder discovered in month six of a ten-month project has had six months to form a view without you.
Look systematically:
- The business case and project brief: the sponsor, customers, users and departments involved.
- Contracts and procurement documents: suppliers, subcontractors, consultants and their key people.
- The physical and regulatory setting: councils, regulators, utilities, neighbours, landlords and insurers.
- The organisation: functions affected by the change, such as operations, maintenance, finance, IT, safety and human resources, and any representative bodies.
- Previous similar projects: who turned out to matter last time?
- Directions of influence: look upward to sponsors and executives, downward to the delivery team, sideways to peers and other functions competing for the same resources, and outward to customers, suppliers, the community and authorities.
A short workshop with people who know the organisation and the site usually finds more stakeholders than any checklist. Ask: who could stop this, who could slow it, who will have to live with the result, and who will be inconvenienced while it is built?
The stakeholder register
A stakeholder register records, for each stakeholder or group:
- Name and role, and the contact person for groups.
- Interest: what they care about in relation to the project.
- Influence: how they could affect the project, positively or negatively.
- Expectations and concerns.
- Current and desired engagement, explained below.
- Owner: who in the project team manages the relationship.
- Planned engagement and communication.
Treat the register as a living document, reviewed at stage boundaries and whenever the project changes. Handle it with care: it contains judgements about real people, so keep it factual and respectful, store it securely and remember that privacy obligations may apply to personal information.
Map power and interest
The most widely used mapping tool is the power and interest grid. Each stakeholder is placed according to their power to affect the project and their interest in it:
| Low interest | High interest | |
|---|---|---|
| High power | Keep satisfied: meet their needs and consult on matters that affect them, without overloading them | Manage closely: involve them in key decisions and engage regularly |
| Low power | Monitor: provide general information and watch for changes | Keep informed: communicate regularly and listen to concerns |
Variations use influence and impact as the axes, which can be more useful when some stakeholders have little formal power but a strong ability to affect outcomes, or when a project’s impact on people is the main concern.
Grids are snapshots. Positions change: a neighbour with low power can gain a great deal of it by contacting the council, and a disengaged executive can become intensely interested when a budget is threatened. Review the map as the project moves.
The salience model: power, legitimacy and urgency
The salience model, developed by the researchers Mitchell, Agle and Wood, adds nuance by considering three attributes:
- Power: the ability to impose their will on the project.
- Legitimacy: the appropriateness of their involvement or claim.
- Urgency: how time-sensitive or critical their claim is.
Combinations of the three produce seven classes:
| Class | Attributes | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| Definitive | Power, legitimacy and urgency | Highest priority; engage immediately |
| Dominant | Power and legitimacy | Influential and expected to be involved; keep closely engaged |
| Dangerous | Power and urgency | May act forcefully without a legitimate role; handle carefully |
| Dependent | Legitimacy and urgency | Rely on others to advance their claims; they may find a powerful ally |
| Dormant | Power only | Could become important if they gain urgency or legitimacy |
| Discretionary | Legitimacy only | Appropriate to engage, but little pressure to do so |
| Demanding | Urgency only | Loud but without power or legitimacy; monitor |
The model’s main value is in spotting movement. The neighbours in the opening example were dependent stakeholders, with legitimate, urgent concerns but no direct power, until the council gave them power and made them definitive.
Assess current and desired engagement
Mapping shows who matters. An engagement assessment shows where each stakeholder stands and where the project needs them to be. A common scale:
- Unaware of the project and its effects.
- Resistant to the project.
- Neutral: aware, neither supporting nor resisting.
- Supportive of the project.
- Leading: actively engaged in making it succeed.
For each key stakeholder, record current and desired levels. Not everyone needs to be leading; a neighbour who moves from unaware to neutral, with their concerns addressed, may be enough. The gap between current and desired engagement tells the team where to focus effort.
Resistance is often information. People resisting a change may be pointing to a real flaw, a cost the project has not counted or a past experience the team should learn from. The stakeholders you do not control article explores competing claims and engagement that genuinely changes decisions.
Plan engagement and communication
For each stakeholder or group, the engagement plan answers:
- What they need to know or contribute, and what the project needs from them.
- The method: face-to-face meetings, briefings, site visits, workshops, written updates, newsletters or a website.
- The frequency and timing, including before key decisions and disruptive work.
- Who communicates: the person with the right credibility and relationship, not always the project manager.
- How feedback will be collected and how the project will respond.
Match the method to the stakeholder and the message. Bad news, decisions that affect people’s jobs and significant disruption deserve conversation, not a newsletter. Routine progress can be written. One-way broadcasts deliver data but rarely build support.
Communication also gets more complex as the team grows. The number of possible communication channels between people in a group is n × (n − 1) ÷ 2: four people have six channels, while ten people have 45. That is one reason larger projects need deliberate communication plans rather than relying on everyone talking to everyone.
A simple communication matrix
Many teams find it useful to summarise the plan in a single table that anyone on the project can read:
| Stakeholder | What they need | Method | Frequency | Responsible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsor | Status, forecast, decisions required | One-page report and short meeting | Fortnightly, and before each stage decision | Project manager |
| Affected staff | What changes for them, when, and how they can contribute | Briefing at team meetings, layout reviews | Fortnightly, and before disruptive work | Line supervisor |
| Key customers | Assurance that supply or service is protected | Personal call or visit | At start, before disruption and at completion | Managing director or account manager |
| Neighbours | Timing of noisy or disruptive work and a contact for concerns | Letter and personal visit | Before work starts and before major disruptions | Builder and project manager |
| Regulators and authorities | Applications, plans and notifications required | Formal submissions and meetings | As required by approvals | Named person per authority |
The matrix makes gaps visible: a stakeholder with no method, no frequency or no named person responsible is not being engaged, whatever the register says.
Involve the people who will operate and maintain the result
The stakeholders most often overlooked are the people who will run and maintain whatever the project delivers. They know how the current arrangement really works, which workarounds exist and what will be awkward in daily use. Involving operators, maintenance staff and supervisors in design reviews, layout decisions and testing tends to surface problems while they are cheap to fix, and it builds ownership of the result. People who helped shape a change are far more likely to make it work after handover than people who had it delivered to them.
Meetings and reports
Two staples of project communication deserve particular care:
- Meetings should have a purpose, an agenda sent in advance, the right attendees, clear decisions and recorded actions with owners. Separate decision meetings from information sessions.
- Reports should be designed around the decisions their readers make, showing status, forecast, risks, issues and decisions required, at the level of detail each audience needs. The reports that change decisions article covers reporting that informs rather than reassures.
Monitor and adjust
Engagement is not a one-off task. At regular intervals, and at stage boundaries:
- Review the register and maps: has anyone’s power, interest, legitimacy or urgency changed?
- Check engagement levels: are stakeholders moving towards the desired level?
- Ask for feedback: are the communications useful, timely and understood?
- Look for new stakeholders: changes in scope, site, suppliers or regulation can bring new ones.
A worked example
This is an illustrative example. A 60-person food distribution business is building a 1,200 square metre cold-storage extension at its warehouse in a light industrial area that borders a residential street. The operations manager is project manager.
Identification. A one-hour workshop with the managing director, warehouse supervisor, maintenance lead and the builder’s project manager identifies 16 stakeholders or groups, including the managing director (sponsor), warehouse staff, maintenance team, two major supermarket customers, the builder, the refrigeration contractor, the electricity distributor, the local council, the insurer, neighbouring businesses, residents on the adjoining street and transport companies that use the site.
Mapping. On the power and interest grid, the managing director, the major customers and the council are in “manage closely” or “keep satisfied”. Warehouse staff are high interest and lower power: “keep informed”. Residents are initially placed in “monitor”. A salience review changes that assessment: residents have legitimate concerns about noise and truck movements, and those concerns will become urgent during night pours and deliveries. They are classed as dependent stakeholders who could quickly become definitive through the council.
Engagement assessment.
| Stakeholder | Current | Desired |
|---|---|---|
| Managing director | Leading | Leading |
| Warehouse staff | Unaware | Supportive |
| Major customers | Unaware | Neutral to supportive |
| Council | Neutral | Neutral, with no objections |
| Residents | Unaware | Neutral |
| Electricity distributor | Neutral | Supportive of connection dates |
Plan. The managing director briefs the major customers in person on how supply will be protected during construction. Warehouse staff receive a briefing and a fortnightly update at the morning meeting, and two staff join the layout review. The builder and project manager visit the adjoining residents before work starts, deliver a letter with a schedule of noisy work and a phone contact, and agree to avoid deliveries before 7 am. The council receives the construction traffic plan in advance. The electricity distributor’s connection application is lodged early, with a named contact checking monthly.
Result. One resident calls about dust in week five, and the builder adds dust suppression the same day. No complaints reach the council. Warehouse staff suggest a change to the door positions that improves forklift flow. The extension is commissioned on schedule, and both supermarket customers report no disruption to supply.
Applying this in an Australian business
- Identify stakeholders at the start, looking upward, downward, sideways and outward.
- Keep a register with interests, influence, engagement and owners.
- Map power and interest, and use salience to spot who could gain power.
- Assess current and desired engagement for key stakeholders.
- Choose methods and messengers to suit the stakeholder and the message.
- Plan communication before disruptive work, not after complaints.
- Treat resistance as information.
- Review the analysis at every stage boundary.
- Handle stakeholder records respectfully and securely.
Where stakeholder management goes wrong
- A list made once and never used.
- Ignoring stakeholders without formal power who can acquire it.
- Broadcasting the same message to everyone.
- The wrong messenger for sensitive news.
- Engagement that cannot change anything, which breeds cynicism.
- Forgetting the people who will operate and maintain the result.
- Waiting for complaints to discover concerns.
Questions to ask at project start
- Who could stop, slow or reshape this project, and how?
- Who will be inconvenienced during delivery, and when?
- Whose power, legitimacy or urgency could change during the project?
- Where does each key stakeholder stand now, and where do we need them to be?
- Who is the right person to talk to each group?
- How will we know our engagement is working?
Bringing it together
Stakeholder analysis earns its place when it changes what a project team does. Identify stakeholders early and widely, record them in a living register, and map them by power and interest, using the salience model to watch for stakeholders whose power, legitimacy or urgency could change. Assess where each key stakeholder stands and where the project needs them to be, then plan engagement and communication with the right methods, timing and messengers. Treat resistance as information, review the analysis as the project moves and engage before disruption rather than after complaints. The time this takes is small compared with the delays it prevents.
Source: KEVOS editorial notes, drawing on earlier KEVOS project management handbooks on identifying project stakeholders, stakeholder mapping with the power and interest grid, salience model and directions of influence, stakeholder engagement planning and planning project communications. The worked example is illustrative. This article is general information.
