JISC

It’s essential to do a stakeholder analysis at the start of the project.

This simple but important exercise will help you understand who will be important to the success of youA stakeholder is anyone who has a vested interest in your project or will be affected its outcomesr project and why, so you can then decide how to involve them. 

To conduct the stakeholder analysis:

• List the stakeholders
• Identify their interest or ‘stake’ in the project
• Assess their importance

In the project plan template, there’s a table where you can record this information There will be stakeholders within your institution and outside

Stakeholders

Identify the stakeholders relevant to your specific project, using the table below as a guide. At this stage, think of anyone who could be affected by the project and its outcomes, or whose support could be valuable to you.

Stakeholders within the institution/project	External stakeholders
Vice chancellor Administrators Teaching staff Research staff Students Technical staff Learning technologists Librarians Users (may be any of the above)	Funding bodies Other institutions Publishers Software developers or vendors Online hosts Standards organisations Other organisations JISC partners Other JISC projects or programmes

Stake in the project

Think through why the stakeholders will be interested in, or affected by, the project and what their stake is. For example, if Think of how each stakeholder could be affected, either positively or negatively, to help you decide who you need to get on board to make the project a successyou’re developing a MLE, then teaching staff and students have a stake in the project if they will have to use it. The Vice Chancellor and senior administrators will also have a stake in the project, as it will affect how learning and teaching is done. If you’re developing a portal, technical staff at the institution may have a stake in the short term, and the publishers whose content you may want to include may have a stake in the long term. 

Importance

Finally, assess the importance of each stakeholder. Decide how important each one is, how much you need their support, and the consequences if you can’t get it. This is rather like identifying the critical success factors, but it’s about who rather than what. If the Vice Chancellor, senior administrators don’t buy into your MLE, you may have no project.

Taking it forward

Once the stakeholder analysis is done, you’ve probably identified 3-4 key stakeholders that are really important to the success of your project. Now you can plan how to get their support and ensure that project outcomes affect them positively. You will probably need a ‘champion’ within the institution to ensure your project has a high profile. Depending on the project, this might be a teacher, an administrator, the head of IT, or a librarian. You might want to invite them to join your management committee. Your  dissemination plan might include regular updates in the institution’s newsletter. If end users are important (e.g. students, researchers, or teachers) you will want to address user needs in your evaluation plan. The stakeholder analysis is the starting point for deciding what stakeholders are important and how to enlist their support as you plan the project work.

Review as you Go During the project, return to the stakeholder analysis and see how you’re doing.  Have you got the key stakeholders on board?  Are you involving them or talking to them regularly?  Do they know what you’re doing?  Are they giving you feedback?  If you don’t think you’re getting the support you need, discuss it informally within the project team. Have a brainstorming session to see what other approaches you could try. If you can’t come up with any, discuss it with the programme manager who may have some good ideas that have worked with other projects.