Stakeholder analysis is a particularly useful tool for assessing the potential impact of a solution on people, as well as the potential impact people will have on the solutions’ adoption in an organisation (when carrying out the exercises, you should also consider people outside of your organisation).

The purpose of this tool is to list all of the stakeholders involved and consider some of their key characteristics. We recommend using three categories of stakeholder:

1. Primary stakeholders: People who will be directly affected by or have a direct influence on the solution (eg, enumerators would be primary stakeholders for a digital data gathering solution)
2. Secondary stakeholders: People who are not directly affected, or do not have a direct influence on the solution (eg, children in a classroom would be affected by quality of teaching, but would not be involved in a teacher training solution)
3. Key stakeholders: Both primary or secondary stakeholders who are significantly affected by a new solution or who can influence the impact of a new solution (using this category allows you to think about who the most important stakeholders are overall)

There are numerous stakeholder matrices that can be used as templates for this exercise, and we provide an example template below, including some key questions. Your stakeholder map should not be a static exercise; it is useful to revisit and revise it periodically, to ensure you are registering any new stakeholders, and that you are monitoring your strategies for engaging with them.