Everyone on board - from the sponsor to the critical department
A register with handling plans, an AKV matrix, committee series and approved decisions: stakeholder work as part of the project - not a slide deck next to it.
The stakeholder loop
Influence, stance and conflict potential per person - environment analysis and portfolio derive automatically.
Why stakeholder management fails today
Rarely for lack of goodwill - mostly because the analysis lives next to the project.
The stakeholder analysis is a slide
Created once at kickoff, never touched again. When attitudes change, the slide doesn't change with them.
Responsibility gets settled in the conflict
Who decides, who contributes, who is merely informed - as long as things go well, it stays unsettled. Until they don't.
The sponsor is the last to know
Between project routine and committee date lies radio silence. What arrives is scraped together - and already outdated.
“Who actually agreed to this?”
Decisions are made in the meeting, but who attended and who approved is recorded nowhere reliably.
Stakeholder work step by step - from register to committee
This is how participants stay involved, not just recorded: analyse, settle responsibility, run committee series, secure decisions - and inform externals deliberately.
Stakeholders get recorded - and get a plan
The project register holds type, influence, stance and conflict potential per person - plus the handling plan with expectations and concerns, expected behaviour, measures and a responsible owner. Environment analysis and stakeholder portfolio derive automatically from this master data, with four named strategy quadrants: participative, discursive, restrictive, repressive.
Type: internal · influence: high · conflict potential: medium
Stakeholder portfolio - automatic from the register
Axes: influence/power × conflict potential
The AKV matrix ends the responsibility guessing game
Per work package of the matrix, six markers settle which role each person carries - classic RACI logic right in the project, without an external spreadsheet. People are system users or externally named participants, and you replace a whole row in one go when somebody leaves the project. On top come four responsibility roles on the project itself - from sponsor to deputy - and the org chart along reporting lines.
Six markers per cell, whole rows replaceable in one go - RACI logic without an external spreadsheet.
The steering committee is a series - not a one-off
Committees run as recurring series with automatic follow-up dates and open items carried across the whole series. Participants have roles - organiser, minute-taker, participant - and attendance goes into the minutes as present, absent or excused. When someone later asks who was there: it's in black and white.
The next date is created automatically - open items carry across the whole series.
Approval comes from the responsible person - not from chance
Every decision carries one of four statuses and a responsible person - who approves right from the notification, without hunting for the minutes. The decision register bundles everything per series and project-wide: the sponsor sees what they decided, and the project knows where it stands.
Approval by the responsible person - right from the notification, with one of four statuses.
Externals get documents - not logins
External participants are managed as team members without an account: they appear in roles, matrix and contacts, but see nothing in the system. Informing happens deliberately - the minutes as PDF or Markdown to the distribution list, the project one-pager as a PDF for the sponsor, and the status report documents which state officially went to the committee.
Externals see nothing in the system - they receive documents. Whatever leaves the house stays a deliberate act.
And the contact details of all counterparts - with or without an account - live in the contacts register on project and work-package level, instead of in the project lead's private address book.
One loop, five modules - one data foundation
In WORKSPACE.PM, stakeholder management is not a slide topic but the platform working in concert: who is involved lives where the work happens.
Project management
Meeting management
Team organisation
One data foundation - from register to minutes
Stakeholders, roles, meetings and decisions share the same base. The analysis doesn't live next to the project - it is part of it.
And the delicate points?
Stakeholder work concerns people - and tolerates neither duplicate upkeep nor indiscretion.
Sensitive assessments stay protected
Stance and conflict potential are assessments about people. They have their own permission area with four levels - controlled separately, globally and per project.
Analysis without duplicate upkeep
Environment analysis and stakeholder portfolio aren't drawn, they're computed: they derive automatically from the register master data and stay current when an assessment changes.
Informing stays a deliberate act
There is no automatic distribution to externals - by design. You generate documents deliberately: minutes, one-pagers, Word templates with live data. Whatever leaves the house, you have seen.
Related use cases
The participants are on board - this is what comes next.
Frequently asked questions about stakeholder management
What project leads and PMOs want to know before switching.
A real register, per project: type, influence, stance and conflict potential per person, plus a handling plan with expectations, expected behaviour, measures and an owner. Environment analysis and stakeholder portfolio derive automatically. An organisation-wide register across all projects deliberately doesn't exist - stakeholder work stays project work.
Yes - as the AKV matrix: people by work packages, one of six markers per cell. The matrix's work packages are maintained as its own rows, people are system users or externally named participants, and a whole person row can be replaced in a single step.
No - externals are managed as participants without an account: with a role in the team, in the AKV matrix and in the contacts register, but without a login. They are informed via documents: minutes as PDF or Markdown, the one-pager as a PDF, Word documents from templates with live data.
Every decision has a responsible person who is notified and approves right from the notification - with one of four statuses. The decision register per series and project-wide shows at any time what is decided, open or rejected.
Only those who may: the project network has its own permission area with the levels none, view, editor and administration - separate globally and per project. Assessments of stance and conflict potential stay within the defined circle.
Bring your stakeholders into the project - not onto a slide
Start for free: create the register, fill the AKV matrix, plan the first steering committee as a series - and in 30 days you'll know whether it fits.