Who has a say
In short: A stakeholder is anyone who affects a change or feels its consequences. The most expensive requirements belong to the people nobody asked: the warehouse, accounting, the courier, support and the law.
Problem
Everyone said yes. The warehouse was not there
The shop adds a new option: the customer can change the delivery address while the order has not shipped. The owner wants it, the designer draws it, the developer builds it, the tester checks it. Everything passes.
In the first week 37 parcels go to the old address. The warehouse prints the label the moment an order becomes paid, and packs in the morning. The new address gets into the system, but not onto the label already stuck on the box.
Nobody got their own part wrong. Nobody asked the warehouse.
The idea
Stakeholder
The people a change affects, or who affect it, are called stakeholders. They are not only the ones who want it and pay for it:
- the customer uses the feature;
- the owner wants it and pays;
- the warehouse packs and sticks on labels;
- accounting reconciles the money at the end of the month;
- the courier collects the parcels and reads the label;
- support answers the phone when something is unclear;
- the law says what the shop must do and what it may not.
A stakeholder is a role, not a name. "The warehouse" can be one person or thirty. What matters is that it has a need nobody else knows about.
The idea
The ones nobody asks
The customer and the owner are always in the room. The expensive gaps come from the others:
| Who | What they know | What breaks if you miss them |
|---|---|---|
| The warehouse | when the label is printed, how long a parcel takes | parcels to the old address, orders that wait |
| Accounting | what every order must show for them to reconcile the month | the totals do not match the bank |
| The courier | which address format they accept and when they collect | parcels that never leave |
| Support | what customers ask and what support itself sees on screen | calls nobody can answer |
| The law | the customer's rights and the shop's obligations | fines, refunds, bad reputation |
The law is special. It does not come to meetings or write emails, but its requirements apply whether anyone wrote them down or not. In the EU a customer who buys online can withdraw from the purchase within 14 days of receiving the goods, without giving a reason. "Returns within 14 days of the order" is a requirement that contradicts the law.
More precisely, if you are curious
The BABOK Guide v3 lists typical stakeholder roles: customer, end user, domain subject matter expert, implementation subject matter expert, operational support, project manager, regulator, sponsor, supplier, tester, and the business analyst. The regulator is where the law sits in that list.
IREB CPRE describes three sources of requirements: stakeholders, documents (laws, standards, contracts, old specifications) and existing systems (the old version of the shop, the courier's system). The law usually reaches you through a document, not a person.
The 14-day right of withdrawal comes from the EU Consumer Rights Directive (2011/83/EU) and is part of the national law of every member state. The details (exceptions, who pays for the return) are for a lawyer. The analyst's job is to know that the law is a stakeholder, and to ask.
Try it
Who was not asked?
The idea
The map: influence and interest
A big change has dozens of stakeholders. You cannot spend the same time with all of them. So you sort them by two questions:
- Influence: can they decide, stop or change things?
- Interest: how much does the change affect them?
You get four groups. This is the stakeholder map:
| Low interest | High interest | |
|---|---|---|
| High influence | Keep satisfied: the bank for payments | Work closely: the owner |
| Low influence | Monitor: the cleaning company | Keep informed: the warehouse, support |
The trap is the bottom right corner. The warehouse has no say in what gets built, so it is easy to forget. Yet it knows how things really work.
More precisely, if you are curious
In BABOK this is the technique Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas: a list, then a map (influence against interest, for example), and where needed personas (an invented but typical person from the group, such as "Maria, 34, shops on her phone during lunch"). Other sources call the map a power/interest grid. The names of the quadrants vary from book to book. The idea is the same: your time goes where the influence is and where the affected people are.
The map changes. If the warehouse stops work because of the wrong labels, its influence suddenly becomes high.
Try it
Where on the map?
The idea
How to find the ones you missed
The list the owner gives you on the first day is never complete. Three habits fill it in:
- Walk the path of the thing. The order goes from the cart through payment, the warehouse, the courier, the customer, returns and accounting. Every stop has a person with requirements.
- Ask everyone "who else should I ask?". The warehouse will tell you about the courier. The courier will tell you about the address format.
- Read the documents. Laws, the contracts with the courier and the bank, the terms of the site. The requirements of the people who are not in the room are written there.
In the address story the first habit is enough. The order becomes paid, and then the warehouse prints the label. The question "what happens to the order after it is paid?" would have led to the warehouse in five minutes.
Exercise
The new feature
1. Who will you ask? The shop wants to launch "cash on delivery": the customer pays the courier in cash. Who do you ask, and what?
Test