By Chamindra Hettitantirige
Stakeholder management is one of the key aspects business analysts should develop in their range of skillsets. Business Analysts are the ones who connect the vital cogs of a project or program. One of these “vital cogs” would be the stakeholders who could be either individuals or groups. Hence, managing them effectively could be the point where the project can be a success or a failure.
Stakeholders of a project can be internal or external. Internal stakeholders include employees, project team members (project manager, developers, QA team members). The external stakeholders include the customers, suppliers and partners.
The project sponsors could fall into both categories based on the organization they are serving to. For example, if it’s a service organization the project sponsor could be an external stakeholder while if it’s a product organization, they could be internal stakeholders.
Identify your Stakeholders
The first step for a business analyst in stakeholder management is to identify them with respect to their project. This could be done during their requirement elicitation process by first identifying the nature of the business, the scope, the nature of the business problem. Once done, business analysts can do a stakeholder mapping to map out the stakeholders of the project. A typical stakeholder map would look like as follows where the business analyst can map each stakeholder, they identify to the relevant quadrant to get a better understanding of their stakeholder’s involvement in the project.
Source: https://www.boreal-is.com/blog/stakeholder-mapping-identify-stakeholders/
It is important to remember that every stakeholder you map to the above quadrants is important. You cannot ignore any one of them. So, taking time and doing the mapping carefully is vital so that no key stakeholder is missed.
Once the stakeholders are clearly identified, Business Analysts should then work with them to bring clarity to the business problems they have and then navigate through close engagement to solve the real business problem by defining the correct solutions.
Business Analyst the communicator
These conversations are not always pleasant. However, a business analyst should be skillful enough to resolve the conflicts, avoid being biased and satisfy all the stakeholders when working towards the correct solution. Some of the best ways to avoid these conflicts is to keep the stakeholders updated with consistent status updates, regular communication by using collaboration tools, discuss and solve areas which needs clarity and then getting their consent / approval for the updates being shared.
Be Patient, Look at the Bigger Picture.
In some instances, stakeholders might oppose the ideas, solutions provided by a business analyst. In such scenarios, the BA should be patient and should listen to their ideas carefully without disregarding them. It is often said that business analysts should “look at the bigger picture” when providing solutions, hence listening to the stakeholders’ ideas even though they may give something out of context, is important.
In addition, provide your honest opinion and feedback. Ask open ended questions so that you can hack into your stakeholders’ minds to get them thinking before answering you. This will surely help.
The above methods will take you down a road which you never thought of before as in many instances, majority of your stakeholders will be the end users of the solution you are designing to be developed. So, getting their output, insights are vital for the success of the solution to be provided.
AI won’t replace stakeholder management
With the advancement of AI, many areas in business analysis have changed and evolved. However, stakeholder management is one aspect that will remain the same as human-to-human engagement is something that cannot be imitated by AI. The interactions, the engagement and the ideas shared between the stakeholders and business analysts will drive innovation and inspiration and it will derive change for the betterment of an organization in a methodical manner.
So, stakeholder management is a key aspect / skill that business analysts should develop to improve their career and deliver tangible business results to their stakeholders and their business organizations. It will help them to identify the real business problem while building a healthy relationship with their stakeholders with whom they will be working from the start to the beginning to design the correct solution. Developing this soft skill among the various technical skills will help every business analyst to improve their career and be identified as a “true communicator” who is actively engaged in bridging the gap between users and systems to deliver the right results to the organization to achieve their business goals and objectives.
