Stakeholder analysis - Citizen Service Portal (BSP-2026), as of 12/03/2026
- Project manager
- Dr Anke Berger
- Next review
- before the steering committee on 22/04/2026
- Scale
- Influence and conflict potential 1 (low) to 5 (high)
| No. | Stakeholder1 | Type2 | Influence3 | Conflict potential4 | Attitude5 | Expectations / concerns6 | Strategy7 | Action8 | Owner9 | Due date10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Staff council, chair Mr Kaminski | internal, social | 4 | 2 | neutral (12/03) | Demands a works agreement on performance monitoring; fears surveillance of case workers via portal statistics | participative | Draft the works agreement jointly | Dr Berger | 30/04/2026 |
| 2 | First Deputy Mayor (sponsor) | internal, factual | 5 | 1 | supportive | Expects visible results before the budget debate in May | participative | Choose pilot services so that one is presentable before May | Dr Berger | 31/03/2026 |
| 3 | Public order department | internal, social | 4 | 4 | opposed | Portal takes over appointment booking currently done by two posts in the department; posts not yet reassigned | discursive | Meeting with the head of department on reassignment, result into the project charter | Dr Berger | 28/03/2026 |
| 4 | IT coordination | internal, factual | 3 | 3 | neutral | Expects operation at the municipal data centre, not by its three own administrators; fears on-call duty without posts | discursive | Fix the operating model before contract award | IT coordination | 15/06/2026 |
| 5 | Data protection officer Ms Yilmaz | internal, factual | 2 | 2 | neutral | Data protection impact assessment before the pilot; storage locations of application data | restrictive | Anchor DPIA date in the project plan | Dr Berger | 30/04/2026 |
| 6 | State digitalisation authority | external, factual | 2 | 1 | supportive | Connection to the state service account per specification; test environment only on request | restrictive | Request test access | IT coordination | 31/05/2026 |
| 7 | Opposition group in the city council | external, social | 2 | 4 | opposed | Will pit the €480,000 against the primary school renovation in the budget debate | repressive | Monitor; prepare argument on waiting times | Dr Berger | 30/04/2026 |
| 8 | Lindenau Gazette | external, social | 2 | 2 | neutral | Reports on waiting times at the citizens' office; interested in a before-and-after | restrictive | Plan press date for the pilot launch | press office | 15/11/2026 |
Notes on the fields
- 1Stakeholder: Person, group or organisation with role. As concrete as possible - "the staff council" is better than "employees".
- 2Type: Internal or external, and whether the relationship is factual (law, money, technology) or social (interests, sensitivities). This produces the environment grid.
- 3Influence: Can the stakeholder stop, delay or speed up the project? 5 = decides on budget or approval, 1 = can complain.
- 4Conflict potential: How much do their interests collide with the project? Not to be confused with attitude: someone can be positively disposed and still have a lot to lose.
- 5Attitude: Supportive, neutral, opposed - as of today, with date. Attitudes change; the column is reset at every review.
- 6Expectations / concerns: What the stakeholder wants from the project and what they fear - from their point of view, in their words. This is the column the action follows from.
- 7Strategy: From influence and conflict potential: participative (actively involve), discursive (seek dialogue), restrictive (inform), repressive (monitor). That is the stakeholder matrix in one column.
- 8Action: What concretely happens.
- 9Owner: Who does it: person or unit.
- 10Due date: By when, as a date. Without a date it is an intention.
What a stakeholder analysis is and why it comes before the project plan
Stakeholders are everyone who can influence a project or is affected by it - sponsor, departments, staff council, vendors, authorities, citizens, press. The stakeholder analysis (also environment analysis, project environment analysis or stakeholder mapping) answers three questions for each of them: how much influence do they have? How much do their interests collide with the project? And where do they stand today? From the answers follows whom you involve, with whom you seek dialogue, whom you merely inform and whom you keep an eye on.
The tool for this is three views of the same list: the stakeholder register as a table, the environment grid (internal/external against factual/social) and the stakeholder matrix, in which influence is plotted against conflict potential - some call it stakeholder portfolio, force-field analysis or power-interest grid. The four fields of the matrix give the strategy: participative, discursive, restrictive, repressive.
The analysis belongs at project start, before the project plan. Whoever in the Lindenau example only notices after contract award that the public order department loses two posts and the staff council wants a works agreement, replans. And it is not a one-off: attitudes change, which is why the template has a date per row and a date for the next review.
The template comes as an Excel sheet with register, environment grid and matrix (grid and matrix fill from the register), as a PowerPoint slide for presenting to the steering committee, and as a PDF, plus the completed sample above.
How to fill in the stakeholder analysis template
Collect first, then rate. In half an hour with two or three people from the team, write down everyone who is affected or has a say - including the ones who are awkward. Twenty rows is normal, five is too few. Only once the list stands do the ratings come.
Rate influence and conflict potential on a scale of 1 to 5, but separately: the First Deputy Mayor has maximum influence and almost no conflict potential; the public order department has both. Do not confuse conflict potential with attitude - someone can be friendly today and still have a lot to lose. Attitude is a snapshot with a date.
The most important column is "expectations and concerns". Write it from the stakeholder's point of view, ideally in their words - "fears on-call duty without posts" says more than "sceptical". The action follows from this column. The strategy follows from influence and conflict potential, by the same rule as in WORKSPACE.PM: influence 3 to 5 and conflict potential 1 to 2 means participative, i.e. actively involve; influence 3 to 5 and conflict potential 3 to 5 means discursive, i.e. seek dialogue; influence 1 to 2 means restrictive, i.e. inform, and with conflict potential 4 to 5 repressive, i.e. monitor.
Every action has an owner and a due date. And the whole list has a date for the next review - in the example before the steering committee. The numbered notes on the sheet above go through the columns one by one.
Typical mistakes in stakeholder analyses
- Only the friendly ones are listed
- The list contains sponsor, team and the vendor - not the opposition group, not the department that loses posts. The analysis exists for the awkward stakeholders; the pleasant ones do not need one.
- Attitude rated instead of conflict potential
- The department was nice in the meeting, so conflict 1. Two months later it blocks appointment booking because its two posts were never resolved. Conflict potential measures what someone has to lose, not how they behave.
- Action without a date
- "Inform regularly" is not an action. "Meeting with the head of department by 28/03, result into the project charter" is.
- Done once, never looked at again
- The analysis from project start sits in the folder, the staff council has since changed its attitude, and nobody knows. A date per row and a review before every steering committee - that is the whole effort.
- The analysis is on the distribution list
- The register with "opposition group: opposed, monitor" ends up as an attachment to the status report. The stakeholder analysis is a working document of the project manager, not a report.
When the Excel template stops being enough
For one project and one project manager the spreadsheet is the right tool. It gets difficult when several people work on it: after the third review there are four versions of the file, the matrix on the PowerPoint slide shows the state from two months ago, and whoever wants to read the details on a stakeholder scrolls through a 400-character cell.
In WORKSPACE.PM the stakeholder analysis is a page inside the project, next to risks and team:
| In the file | WORKSPACE.PM |
|---|---|
| Register, grid and matrix are three sheets that have to be reconciled after every change. | Environment grid and stakeholder portfolio matrix are derived from the same records as the register, on the same page. |
| Expectations, concerns and actions are squeezed into table cells. | Every stakeholder has a detail view with expectations and concerns, expected behaviour, actions and an owner from the users. |
| The matrix is redrawn by hand for the slide. | The stakeholder portfolio shows influence against conflict potential with the four strategy quadrants participative, discursive, restrictive, repressive. |
| The analysis sits in a folder, separate from risks and project team. | The list is filterable by stakeholder type and search term and sits in the project next to risks, team and reports. |
This template exists in WORKSPACE.PM as the stakeholder page inside the project
Every project in WORKSPACE.PM has a stakeholder page: the register as a table with detail view, per stakeholder type, conflict potential, influence, attitude as well as expectations, expected behaviour, actions and owner. Alongside it the environment analysis as a grid and the stakeholder portfolio as a matrix with four named strategy quadrants, both from the same records.
See stakeholder management in WORKSPACE.PMFrequently asked questions about the stakeholder analysis template
01What does the template cost, and do I have to sign up?
Nothing, and no. The files sit directly behind the links, without a form and without an e-mail address.
02Stakeholder analysis, environment analysis, stakeholder matrix - what is the difference?
The stakeholder analysis is the process; the environment analysis (internal/external against factual/social) and the stakeholder matrix (influence against conflict potential) are two representations of the result. In the Excel template they are two sheets that fill from the register.
03How many stakeholders belong on the list?
As many as there are - for a mid-sized public sector project between fifteen and thirty. If there are only five, the awkward ones are missing. Better to group later than to list too few at the start.
04Which scale for influence and conflict potential?
In the template 1 to 5, because that is quick in a workshop. Some organisations use three levels (low, medium, high) - that is enough too, and it is how WORKSPACE.PM works. More important than the scale is that everyone on the team means the same thing by a 4.
05How often do I update the analysis?
Before every steering committee, at least quarterly, and whenever a stakeholder visibly changes attitude. That is why the attitude column carries a date.
06Does the template work in LibreOffice?
The Excel file contains no macros and uses only standard functions, so that it also works in LibreOffice Calc. LibreOffice replaces the Calibri font with Carlito, which has the same widths, so lines and pages do not shift. Grid and matrix fill via the TEXTJOIN function (TEXTVERKETTEN in German Excel); in Microsoft Excel this needs Excel 2019 or Microsoft 365, older versions show #NAME? there. The register works everywhere. We tested the files with Microsoft Office.
07May I adapt the template and use it at work?
Yes, commercially too, in any number of projects, with your own columns and scale. Only resale and publication as your own template are excluded.
Manage stakeholders in the project instead of in a spreadsheet
The sandbox opens a WORKSPACE.PM instance with demo projects, no registration. Create a stakeholder there and see how grid and matrix follow from it.
Up and running in five minutes, no credit card.