Dean Peters stakeholder Map & Matrix
What Is It
Look across stakeholders and categorize them according to key variables (e.g., interest, influence, impact).
Why Use It
Gain a clear picture of who stakeholders are and determine strategies for stakeholder engagement.
When to Use It
Early in the planning/strategizing process.
How to Do It
- Define the variables you want to analyze about your stakeholders: influence, strength of relationship, cost to maintain, interest, strategic objectives, etc. Discuss relevant variables with your project team, and consider performing multiple analyses.
- Draw an x and y-axis based on paired variables. Use multiple sets of axes to examine a variety of relationships.
- Place stakeholder names in the appropriate quadrant. Discuss the desired distribution of stakeholders across the quadrants and the potential for shifting stakeholders from one quadrant to another. Ensure the lists include a representative sample of the full range of diversity among stakeholders.
- Make a list of specific actions your team can take to move stakeholders into the desired quadrants. If you’d like to capture more details, use the template below.
Key Concepts
Power-Interest Grid — A 2x2 matrix plotting stakeholders by their power to affect the project and their interest in its outcome. It produces four engagement strategies: manage closely, keep satisfied, keep informed, and monitor.
Paired Variables — The two dimensions chosen for each axis (e.g., influence vs. interest, or cost-to-maintain vs. strategic value). Running multiple paired analyses reveals relationships a single grid would hide.
Quadrant Migration — The deliberate strategy of moving a stakeholder from their current quadrant to a desired one through targeted actions. This turns a static snapshot into an actionable engagement roadmap.
Influence vs. Impact — Distinguishing stakeholders who shape decisions (influence) from those who bear the consequences (impact). High-impact but low-influence groups are often overlooked yet critical for adoption.
Representative Diversity — Ensuring the stakeholder set spans the full range of affected roles, functions, and perspectives — not just the loudest or most accessible voices. Gaps here create blind spots in scope and adoption risk.
Engagement Strategy — The differentiated communication and involvement approach assigned per quadrant, ranging from deep collaboration to light monitoring. It allocates limited PM bandwidth where it yields the most leverage.
PM Applications
- Build the stakeholder section of a PRD or project charter by mapping who must approve, who must be consulted, and who must merely be informed.
- Prepare for a roadmap review or steering committee by identifying high-power, low-interest stakeholders to keep satisfied before they block decisions.
- Define a change-management and rollout communication plan for a launch, assigning cadence and channel per quadrant.
- Sequence pre-wiring conversations ahead of OKR planning so high-influence partners are aligned before commitments are finalized.
- Drive a discovery-phase stakeholder briefing where the team agrees on engagement owners and next actions per stakeholder.
- Audit a stalled initiative by re-mapping stakeholders to diagnose which neglected groups are creating friction or resistance.
Benefits
- Quickly assess multiple stakeholders
Common Pitfalls
- Treating the map as a one-time artifact instead of revisiting it as influence and interest shift across project phases, leaving the engagement plan stale and misaligned.
- Choosing vague or redundant axis variables (e.g., 'importance' vs. 'priority') so quadrants blur together and produce no actionable distinction.
- Plotting only the obvious, accessible stakeholders and omitting silent high-impact groups, which surfaces as adoption resistance after launch.
- Stopping at categorization without defining specific migration actions and owners, so the matrix becomes a wall decoration rather than an engagement plan.
- Conflating influence with seniority — assuming the org chart equals real decision power — and under-engaging the people who actually sway outcomes.
- Doing the mapping solo rather than with the project team, baking in one person's political assumptions and missing relationship intel others hold.
Combine With
Use Stakeholder Identification Canvas and/or Stakeholder Identification Canvas to ideate your set of stakeholders Use Stakeholder Power Categories to help prioritize which stakeholders you want to engage Use Quickstart Stakeholder Engagement to help develop next steps to engage with each stakeholder
Assets
- PDF: Download
- Markdown Template: template.md
Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| ITK Phase | SCOPE |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Group Size | 4+ people |
| Time Required | 45+ minutes |
| Source | itk.mitre.org |