CS 410
Team Blue
STAT
Stakeholder Analysis Tool
Brian Russell
13
Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Problem ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Solution Statement ...................................................................................................................... 5
STAT Product Description ............................................................................................................. 6
Stakeholder Action Management Steps ...................................................................................... 6
Stakeholders ............................................................................................................................ 7
Classifications ......................................................................................................................... 7
Attitude ................................................................................................................................... 9
Influence ................................................................................................................................. 9
Management Plan.................................................................................................................. 11
Major Hardware/Software Components ................................................................................... 11
Stakeholders in System Problems ................................................................................................. 12
STAT Prototype ............................................................................................................................ 12
Graphics and Views .................................................................................................................. 12
Save File.................................................................................................................................... 13
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 14
Table of Figures
Figure 1 ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Figure 2 – SAM Steps ..................................................................................................................... 6
Figure 3 – Stakeholder Input........................................................................................................... 7
Figure 4 – Classification Definitions .............................................................................................. 8
Figure 5 – Classification Input ........................................................................................................ 8
Figure 6 – Attitude Input................................................................................................................. 9
Figure 7 – Relationship Matrix ..................................................................................................... 10
Figure 8 - Relationship Graph....................................................................................................... 10
Figure 9 - Stakeholder Management Plan ..................................................................................... 11
Figure 10 - STAT Prototype MFCD ............................................................................................. 12
Figure 11 - Project XML File ....................................................................................................... 13
Introduction
Stakeholder Analysis lies at the heart of every project. Stakeholders play a vital and necessary
role in any project. They can make or break its success. It is important for the project leader to
correctly identify everyone that he thinks should be a stakeholder and whether or not they are a
threat or a potential major contribution. Appropriate action should be taken accordingly.
Unfortunately oftentimes project managers neglect to identify requisite stakeholders, which
ultimately leads to the demise of their projects.
Problem
In project management, stakeholders play a vital role in the success or demise of a project. A
better solution is needed to easily identify and analyze stakeholders to maintain situational
awareness throughout the problem solving process. There is no clear industry standard for
Stakeholder Analysis. The lack of standardization suggests that project managers most often
result to manual or improvised methods as seen below in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Stakeholders are commonly listed in one of “10 reasons projects fail” (Morphy, 2012).
Solution Statement
A solution lies in: 1.) having a standardized and refined method to approach stakeholder
analysis and 2.) introducing that method through an easy to understand, smart yet simplistic,
medium such as a computer program. That is where STAT comes into play. STAT is a software
solution that looks to alleviate the currently primitive methods of stakeholder analysis. This tool
will encompass identifying, prioritizing, and analyzing stakeholders in a practical, visual
environment. STAT uses methods and topologies based on ground-breaking research on
stakeholder analysis from NCSOSE. Following the topologies developed by NCSOSE, the CS
410 Blue team has put a user interface, and given the STAT the ability to dynamically plot
stakeholders given user input.
STAT Product Description
Through the virtual running environment that Java is, STAT is a platform independent
program that does not require a specific operating system to run. It is not a server-client program,
instead it runs by itself on your computer. Which means no network connection is required.
This allows the program to carry NCSOSE stakeholder analysis methods further into the project
management domain.
Stakeholder Action Management Steps
STAT uses 5 steps to analyze the key stakeholders and devise what kind of action the
user should take. They are, in order, Stakeholders, Classifications, Attitudes, Influence, and
Management Plan.
Figure 2 – SAM Steps
Upon creating a new project, the program will, by default, walk the user through these steps in
order, which is left to right as seen in Figure 2, however it is not required that they always run
through these steps in order. That is to say, the steps are non-linear.
Stakeholders
The “Stakeholders” step is where the user will enter the stakeholders into the program.
Essentially the only necessary piece of information here is a name for a given stakeholders but
the user is also able to input the stakeholders wants and some notes about that stakeholder.
Figure 3 – Stakeholder Input
Figure 3 shows a picture of what the “Stakeholders” step might look like. The Name, Wants, and
Notes columns allow the user to input the information that was described.
Classifications
During the “Classifications” step, the user must answer three yes or no questions about
every stakeholder.
1.) Is this stakeholder considered to have Power?
2.) Is this stakeholder considered to have Legitimacy?
3.) Is this stakeholder considered to have Urgency?
NCSOSE adapted the meaning of these three classifications from their research in Stakeholder in
Systems Problems as seen in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4 – Classification Definitions
This typology is available in STAT by simply answering
the three yes or no questions about each stakeholder as
pictured in Figure 5.
Figure 5 – Classification Input
Attitude
Attitude can be seen in Figure 6. The two right-most
columns control a stakeholders attitude. There are two
attitudes: Threat and Cooperation. The user can either
rate High or Low for these two.
Figure 6 – Attitude Input
Influence
The “Influence” step starts by the user entering the relationships each stakeholder has
with another. The strength of a relationship is quantified by three simple tiers: High, Medium, or
Low. This is represented by ‘H’, ‘M’, or ‘L’, respectively, as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7 – Relationship Matrix
After the user inputs these relationships, the program can take this data, along with some of the
data gathered in the previous steps, and plot them onto a relationship graph (Figure 8).
Figure 8 - Relationship Graph
This graph makes it clear which stakeholders hold a high influence. This is useful because it
allows the viewer to visually see which stakeholder they should target and take action
accordingly.
Management Plan
After all the other steps are completed, the management plan gathers all of the
information about each stakeholder and puts it into a table (Figure 9).
Figure 9 - Stakeholder Management Plan
This is the end result of the SAM Steps and one of the main take-away’s of STAT.
Major Hardware/Software Components
STAT is a simple standalone software solution that does not require stringent computer
specifications. As mentioned earlier, STAT will not require an internet connection to run and
does not need to even be installed on the user’s computer. The exact minimum requirements
have not be determined as of yet, but it is speculated that any computer who has an up-to-date
version of Java will be able to run STAT with ease.
Stakeholders in System Problems
NCSOSE sought to develop a new approach to stakeholder analysis centered around two
questions "how can we identify our stakeholders?" and "what strategies can we employ to engage
the stakeholders?--what should we do to get their support (Hester & Adams, STAT Meeting #1,
2013)?" “Stakeholders exist at the center of any systems problem. They are customers, clients,
suppliers, employees, etc. A stakeholder is anyone who can effect or be effected by a project.
Their existance funds systems, design it, build it, operate it, maintain it, and dispose of it (Hester,
Stakeholders in System Problems, 2013).”
STAT Prototype
The prototype of STAT will consist of basic functionality but still have the core concept
of what STAT is. The GUI will be
powered by the Java Swing library.
Graphics and Views
STAT must be able to
dynamically plot stakeholders as seen
in Figure 8 - Relationship Graph. This
means that this graph will change as
Figure 10 - STAT Prototype MFCD
the user adds or deletes stakeholders. The program must be able to correctly re-render this graph
every time a change is made to the project. Among the other views that STAT must dynamically
produce are the less graphically demanding tabular views that are in each SAM Step as seen in
Figure 3, Figure 7, and Figure 9. The tabular views, essentially, are tables where the user enters
their input.
Save File
STAT’s save file format is a simple low space XML file consisting of just text (Figure
11). The only information that is stored in the save file is the input decisions of the SAM Steps.
There are no images or graphics saved per project, all graphics are generated either by the user
entering data through the SAM Steps
(option A in Figure 10) or by loading
the XML file from a previously saved
project (option C in Figure 10).
Figure 11 - Project XML File
Bibliography
Hester, P. T. (2013, April 3). Stakeholders in System Problems.
Hester, P. T., & Adams, K. (2013, April 26). STAT Development Meeting 2. (B. Russell,
Interviewer)
Hester, P. T., & Adams, K. (2013, March 14). STAT Meeting #1. (B. Russell, Interviewer)
Morphy, T. (2012, January 7). Avoid Project Failure - Manager Your Stakeholders. Retrieved
May 9, 2013, from Ezine Articles: http://ezinearticles.com/?Avoid-Project-Failure--Manage-Your-Stakeholders&id=6799927