Plan Stakeholder Engagement

Planning the stakeholder engagement includes establishing and maintaining a fruitful

collaboration with stakeholders, understanding their roles and relevance, and identifying
their needs. To communicate in the best possible way, the business analyst must
perform a thorough analysis of all of the crucial stakeholders and their characteristics.

The more stakeholders are involved, the more complex the task becomes, the inclusion
of every new stakeholder may require the use of a different technique or the adjustment
to the existing approach.

Similar to the previous task the main input of planning the stakeholder engagement is
the organisational need. If the analyst has an understanding of the needs, proper
identification of key stakeholders will be much easier. Another significant input is the
overall business analysis approach as it ensures better stakeholder analysis and
communication.

Planning stakeholder engagement should provide a stakeholder engagement approach

as an output, containing information on the number of stakeholders, their
characteristics, roles, and assignments.

The main elements of the task of planning stakeholder engagement are:

 Performing stakeholders analysis – identifying roles, attitudes, decision-

making authority, level of power or influence;
 Defining stakeholder collaboration;
 Stakeholder communication needs.
Guidelines and tools that a business analyst will lean on while planning stakeholder
engagement are business analysis performance assessment, change strategy, and
current state description.

The key stakeholders for this task are customers, domains subject matter expert, end-
user, project manager, regulator, sponsor, and supplier.

Plan Business Analysis Governance

To plan business analysis governance is to define business analysis components that will
serve as a support of governing function in an organisation. It’s defining how decisions
are made on all aspects of the business, including designs, requirements, reviews,
changes, and prioritisation.

For the organisation to function properly, the process of governance should be clear
and unambiguous. All of the decision-makers and their competencies must be clearly
identified. Also, the information needed to make the decision should be precisely
defined.

The primary inputs in planning business analysis governance are business analysis
approach which ensures consistency in planning and stakeholder engagement
approach which provides information on stakeholders, their characteristics, needs, and
roles.

When performed in the right way the planning of business analysis governance should
provide an output of governance approach which contains information on decision
making stakeholders and their authority and responsibility.

The business analysis governance planning includes the following key elements:

 Decision making;
 Change control process;
 Plan prioritisation approach;
 Plan for approvals.