Stakeholder Profiling

Definition

Stakeholder Profiling

the requirements engineering task during which the relevant stakeholders of the customer organization’s current business enterprise and/or one or more of its systems and/or applications are studied, modeled, and analyzed

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, Stakeholder Profiling is part of the following inheritance hierarchy:

• Type: Abstract
• Superclass: Business Analysis
• Subclasses:
  • None

Responsibilities

The typical responsibilities of Stakeholder Profiling are to:

• Identify the different stakeholders ( persons and roles) and their organization(s).
• Categorize these stakeholders into well-defined and well-understood groups.
• Understand these stakeholders, their needs and desires, their responsibilities, and the tasks that they perform.
• Provide a foundation on which to perform the following tasks:
  • Customer Analysis (via ‘customer’ profiling).
  • Competitor Analysis (via ‘competitor’ profiling).
  • Requirements Identification (e.g., eliciting requirements from various stakeholders).
  • User Analysis (via ‘user’ profiling).

Preconditions

Stakeholder Profiling can typically begin when the following preconditions hold:

• The business strategy phase has begun.
• The business strategy team has been staffed and trained in stakeholder profiling.

Completion Criteria

Stakeholder Profiling is typically complete when the following postconditions hold:

• The different kinds of stakeholders and their organizations have been profiled and analyzed.
• The stakeholder profiles have been developed, evaluated, approved, and delivered to the customer organization.

Steps

Stakeholder Profiling typically involves the business strategy team performing the following steps in an iterative, incremental, and parallel manner:

• Identify the different classes of stakeholders:
  • Persons (i.e., key personnel such as executive sponsors)
  • Roles
  • Job Titles
  • Organizations
• Develop an overview of the different classes of stakeholders:
  • Definition.
  • Contact Information.
  • Job Description.
  • Relationship to the Endeavor.
  • The Relevant Stakeholder’s:
    • Goals.
    • Needs and Desires.
    • Concerns.
    • Rank (Importance regarding the endeavor).
    • Declared Interest (i.e., how interested are they in the endeavor).
    • Responsibilities.
    • Tasks
      (e.g., which are analyzed during the following business analysis tasks).
  • Success Criteria for the Endeavor.
  • Absolute Size of the Stakeholder Class/ Percentage of Stakeholder.
• For each classification of stakeholder, interview or observe stakeholder representatives to determine (where appropriate):
  • The stakeholder’s demographics:
    • Location Distribution:
      • Enterprise-internal employees and/or external users.
      • Geographic locations.
      • Environments (e.g., noise or poor lighting).
    • Age Distribution.
    • Gender Ratio.
    • Marital Status.
    • Role Distribution.
    • Likes and Dislikes.
    • Education Level (including subjects studied and major).
    • Occupation (including job title and responsibilities).
    • Income Distribution.
    • Lifestyle.
    • Native Language(s) and Ethnic Background (culture).
    • Buying Habits.
    • Ways of Finding and Choosing Applications/websites (and associated products and services), which is useful for advertising and marketing purposes.
    • Desires, Needs, Fears and Barriers.
    • Expectations and Change Requests.
    • Information Preferences and Ordering (e.g., the preferred order in which to see the content).
    • Disabilities (e.g., vision, hearing, mobility, or cognitive impairments) and Relevant Abilities (e.g., strength).
    • Knowledge/familiarity with the customer’s digital brand
  • The stakeholder’s computer experience:
    • General Computer Experience (e.g., years and frequency of use).
    • Computer Interaction Experience (e.g., Web, GUI, command line, other).
    • Computer Types Used (including peripherals).
    • Monitors Used including size and resolution.
    • Operating Systems Used (including versions).
    • Networks Used (e.g., Internet, intranet, extranet).
    • Browsers Used.
    • Attitude (towards high technology, computers, and application type).
  • The stakeholder’s application/product/service experience:
    • Total and/or Percentage of Time Used.
    • Frequency of Use.
    • The Platform(s) they use to interface with the application(s).
    • Knowledge of, familiarity with, use of, and attitude (including likes and dislikes about) towards the customer’s and competing brands:
      • Customer organization’s current applications/websites (and associated products, services, or brand).
      • Applications/websites (and associated products, services, or brand) of the customer’s competitors.

Techniques

Stakeholder Profiling typically can be performed using the following techniques:

• Brainstorming.
  Use brainstorming to identify new stakeholders.
• Cross Functional Teams.
  Use cross functional teams to perform the profile the stakeholders.
• Documentation Studies.
  Read and study customer and other documentation to identify new stakeholders and learn about them.
• Incremental Development.
  Incrementally profile the stakeholders.
• Interviews.
  Hold interviews with stakeholders to elicit their goals, responsibilities, tasks, demographics, computer experience, and application/product/service experience.
• Iteration.
  Iterate the stakeholder profiles.
• Joint Application Development (JAD).
  Hold JAD profile stakeholder sessions.
• Observation.
  Observe stakeholders, especially users, (i.e., perform anthropological or ethnographic research) to determine their goals, responsibilities, tasks, demographics, computer experience, and application/product/service experience.
• Parallel Development.
  Profile the stakeholders in parallel with:
  • Other requirements engineering tasks (e.g., requirements identification, requirements reuse, requirements analysis, requirements management).
  • Other activities (e.g., architecting, design, testing, management, configuration management, training).
• Questionnaires.
  Use questionnaires to obtain profile information from stakeholders.
• Task Analysis.
  Analyze the stakeholders’ tasks.
• Timeboxing.
  Timebox the stakeholder profiling task so that new increments of stakeholder profiles are available at regular intervals for driving the remaining requirements engineering tasks.

Work Products

Stakeholder Profiling typically results in the production of the following work products:

• Customer Stakeholder Profiles

Guidelines

• There are typically numerous different classes of stakeholders including but not limited to: customer_representatives, marketing_representatives, subcontractor_representatives, user_representatives, vendor_representatives, computer_operators, systems_administrators, field_support_engineers, trainer, developers, maintainers, regulators, and members of the public.
• Every type of organization (e.g., customer, development, marketing, operations, partner, support, and user) should be considered as a source of stakeholders, although emphasis is typically given to different subsets of the customer and user organizations.
• Stakeholder profiling must include the identification of stakeholders who are not obvious, but whose input is critical to success.
• Stakeholder profiling is usually performed during the business strategy phase, but it can also be performed of during the initiation phase if insufficient business [re]engineering was required to justify a separate business strategy phase.
• Stakeholder profiling is initially performed manually during requirements engineering by either the business strategy (or requirements) team. However, the finished application may actually collect user information and build user profiles based on user input and actions. This information collected automatically may in turn be fed into the content management system and used for content personalization.
• All of the steps are typically not relevant to all classes of stakeholders. Many of the steps tend to be most relevant to different subclasses of users.
• The questions asked during stakeholder profiling varies depending on the type of business or application. For example, a B2C application with private individuals as customers vs. a B2B application with employees as users.
• Many applications, especially Web-based B2C applications, are now being personalized to give each individual user his or her own unique user experience. Also, as users become more sophisticated, they are beginning to demand personalized applications that best meet their individualized needs. Thus, the stakeholder profiling task helps to provide the personalization requirements for the application.
• Stakeholders need to be relevant to and desirous of the endeavor’s success. Thus, potential enemies are stakeholders in defense applications, although they should not set its requirements.
• The input from stakeholders is not equal. Some pay for the application. Some use the application.
• Stakeholder profiling is a prerequisite for successfully performing user-centered design.