A stakeholder map is a way for you to create a picture of everyone who is involved in the system that you’re thinking about. There are always different stakeholders to consider, for example:

• Who is most immediately involved in the system you’re thinking of?
• Who may be partially involved?
• Can we account for those who may be loosely involved?

‍Getting Started With A Stakeholder Map‍

Get started in Step 1 by defining your stakeholders. Note every user, group, or individual that is involved with your project, both directly and indirectly. You'll want to begin by brain dumping everyone that is involved - every stakeholder you can think of! We want to get everything out onto the template before organizing, so think of all the stakeholder possibilities in this step.

Next, you’ll need to categorize each stakeholder. This is the organizational phase of building your stakeholder map. You can do this by dragging and dropping the stakeholders on to the diagram by level of influence. A good rule of thumb is that as you get closer to the center, a stronger focus is put on the stakeholder group. Who is going to be most affected by your solution? What is the north star of your project? Your stakeholder map's center is your target audience.

‍Tips, Tricks, and Variations‍

The stakeholder map template is ultimately organized like a bracket. You'll want to consider what goes in the middle, the first tier, the second tier, etc. In the middle of your stakeholder map you probably want to have the person who is going to be most affected by your solution. Who is most effected by the product or service that you're thinking about? What are the strategies that you're using to build your target audience? Think deeply about these questions before beginning to map them.

Another way of approaching a stakeholder map is to orient it around your target. Sometimes, instead of putting the product, service, or program at the center of your stakeholder map, you can choose to put your key target at the center. This provides a different perspective and can help you think more deeply about your idea.

You can also use a series of stakeholder maps. This allows you to be taking current inventory of your stakeholders every three to six months. Continue to ask yourself if your stakeholders are the same people influencing the experience today as they will be in six months. This way, you can use stakeholder maps in multiple ways. They do not need to be just centered around the experience or around the major persona. They can be used over time to show how and when the major actors in your system of experiences are evolving and changing.

Jump right into the Miro Template

Final Thoughts

A stakeholder map is a great way to get started with a project. You can use this organizational tool to figure out who is involved with a service or product, whether they’re providing, creating, or sourcing anything along the entire chain of delivering a product or service. It can also become a document that you can look back at throughout the project. You may learn some things during the course of your project that make you consider additional changes to your stakeholder map. This exercise can be a dynamic thing that shifts and changes over time. Consider building one every 3-6 months to help develop consistency in thinking about your stakeholders, and as always, have fun with it!