/stakeholder-mapping

name: stakeholder-mapping
argument-hint: "[stakeholder list or initiative]"
description: Prioritize stakeholders using two complementary grids. Use when setting engagement strategy and surfacing whose voice needs elevating after stakeholder identification.
intent: >-
  Run two complementary 2x2 grids — Power × Interest (sets engagement strategy per
  stakeholder) and Impact × Power (surfaces who bears consequences but lacks voice) —
  then compare outputs to reveal blind spots and plan quadrant migration. The grids
  answer different questions and neither one alone is sufficient: Power × Interest
  tells you how to engage; Impact × Power tells you whose voice to elevate. Feed
  outputs into stakeholder-engagement-advisor for per-stakeholder action planning.
type: component
best_for:
  - "After stakeholder identification, when you need to decide who gets which level of engagement"
  - "Preparing an engagement plan before a roadmap review where executives and impacted user groups have conflicting authority"
  - "Surfacing high-impact, low-power user segments who deserve more voice in product decisions but lack org pull"
  - "Re-baselining stakeholder strategy after a reorg has shifted who holds decision authority"
  - "Planning a compliance or regulatory initiative where power to block sits separately from who bears the consequences"
scenarios:
  - "Who should I prioritize engaging on this initiative?"
  - "How do I handle stakeholders with conflicting priorities?"
  - "Help me figure out whose voice is missing from our roadmap decisions"
  - "I need a stakeholder engagement strategy before our quarterly review"
sources:
  - "MITRE Innovation Toolkit — Stakeholder Map & Matrix: https://itk.mitre.org/toolkit-tools/stakeholder-map-and-matrix/"
  - "MITRE Innovation Toolkit — Stakeholder Power Categories: https://itk.mitre.org/toolkit-tools/stakeholder-power-categories/"
theme: stakeholder-comms
estimated_time: "25-40 min"

Stakeholder Mapping

Purpose

Prioritize stakeholders and set engagement strategy. This skill runs two complementary grids on your identified stakeholder set and deliberately compares what they reveal, because each grid shows you something the other cannot.

**Power × Interest** answers: how much does each stakeholder care about this initiative, and how much can they influence it? It produces engagement strategies — who to involve deeply, who to keep informed, who to monitor. This is the grid most PMs know.

**Impact × Power** answers: who bears the consequences of this product's outcomes, and how much organizational power do they actually hold? It surfaces the stakeholders who matter most to get right but are most likely to be underrepresented — high impact, low power.

Running only the first grid optimizes for managing relationships with the powerful. Running only the second produces an equity analysis without an engagement plan. The insight lives in comparing them: a stakeholder who appears in "keep informed" on the first grid and "high impact, low power" on the second is someone you've been under-engaging with consequences that fall entirely on them. That's a product risk.

Use this after stakeholder-identification (which builds the full list) and before stakeholder-engagement-advisor (which plans per-stakeholder outreach).

Input

**Works best with:** Your identified stakeholder list (ideally from `stakeholder-identification`). **Also useful:** What you know about each person's power, interest, and current stance, plus the engagement decisions the map must drive.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

**Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The skill asks for the stakeholder set first — mapping unidentified stakeholders just formalizes your blind spots.

**Example invocation:** `Map these 14 stakeholders for the billing migration on both grids — list attached with role notes.`

Key Concepts

**Power × Interest Grid** — A 2×2 that plots stakeholders by their power to affect the initiative (vertical axis) and their interest in its outcome (horizontal axis). Produces four quadrants with prescribed engagement strategies:

• High power, high interest → **Manage closely** (co-design, frequent touchpoints)
• High power, low interest → **Keep satisfied** (executive briefings, strategic framing)
• Low power, high interest → **Keep informed** (newsletters, demos, transparency)
• Low power, low interest → **Monitor** (light touch, check-ins only)

**Impact × Power Grid** — A 2×2 that plots stakeholders by whether they are significantly affected by the initiative (vertical axis) and the power they hold to shape it (horizontal axis). Produces four quadrants:

• High impact, high power → **Q2** — impacted and empowered; manage closely
• High impact, low power → **Q1** — impacted but marginalized; elevate their voice deliberately
• Low impact, high power → **Q4** — gatekeepers; manage relationship, lower engagement depth
• Low impact, low power → **Q3** — monitor, minimal investment

**Elevating Q1 Voices** — High-impact, low-power stakeholders (Q1) are the people most likely to experience your product's failure modes and least likely to appear in your normal feedback loops. Deliberately increasing their role in roadmap decisions — through research recruitment, usability testing, and requirements review — is not just equitable; it reduces the product risk of building for the wrong problems.

**Quadrant Migration** — The deliberate strategy of moving a stakeholder from their current quadrant to a desired one through targeted actions. A skeptical executive currently in "monitor" who needs to become a sponsor requires a different set of actions than one already in "manage closely." Making migration explicit turns the map from a snapshot into a plan.

**Impact vs. Power** — These are not the