Stakeholder Engagement Foundations

Stakeholder Engagement Foundations is the set of concepts describing who has an interest in an agile project's outcome and how a project team works with those people throughout the project rather than only at its beginning or end, directly implementing the customer collaboration value established among agile foundations. Where project vision and value describe what a project is trying to achieve, and goals and outcomes describe how that achievement is defined and measured, stakeholder engagement describes the ongoing relationship between the people doing the work and the people affected by or invested in its results.

This foundation begins by identifying the different kinds of people who can hold a stake in a project, since not every stakeholder relates to a project in the same way or carries the same kind of interest or influence. It then moves to the practical tools used to understand those relationships and the deliberate approach a project takes to maintaining engagement with them as work proceeds.

Identifying Who Has a Stake

Stakeholder Engagement Definition

Stakeholder engagement is the ongoing practice of involving the people who have an interest in a project throughout its lifecycle, providing the continuous input and feedback that agile's empirical, adaptive approach to planning depends on.

Stakeholder Definition

A stakeholder is any individual or group with an interest in a project's process or outcome, whether because they are affected by it, contribute to it, or hold authority over decisions related to it, forming the broadest category from which more specific roles are drawn.

Customer Definition

A customer is a stakeholder who acquires or is otherwise responsible for the decision to obtain a project's output, distinguished from other stakeholders by this specific acquiring relationship to the product or service being delivered.

End User Definition

An end user is a stakeholder who directly interacts with or uses a project's output, distinguished from a customer in cases where the person acquiring a product is not the same person who actually uses it.

Sponsor Definition

A sponsor is a stakeholder who provides the authority, resources, or organizational backing needed for a project to proceed, typically holding significant influence over a project's continuation and overall direction.

Understanding Stakeholder Relationships

Stakeholder Interest Definition

Stakeholder interest is the specific stake a given stakeholder holds in a project's outcome, describing what that stakeholder cares about and why the project's results matter to them personally or organizationally.

Stakeholder Influence Definition

Stakeholder influence is the degree of power or authority a given stakeholder has to affect a project's direction, decisions, or continuation, distinct from interest in that a stakeholder can have strong interest with little influence, or significant influence with only modest personal interest.

Stakeholder Mapping Definition

Stakeholder mapping is the practice of systematically identifying stakeholders and characterizing their interest and influence, providing a structured basis for deciding how much and what kind of engagement each stakeholder relationship warrants.

Working With Stakeholders Over Time

Stakeholder Collaboration Definition

Stakeholder collaboration is the active, two-way involvement of stakeholders in shaping a project's direction and reviewing its output, going beyond simply informing them of progress to genuinely incorporating their input into ongoing decisions.

Engagement Strategy Definition

An engagement strategy is the deliberate plan for how, how often, and through what means a project team communicates and collaborates with different stakeholders, tailored according to each stakeholder's mapped interest and influence rather than applying a single uniform approach to everyone involved.