Stakeholder Adventure Maps. Drawing Smileys And Walls.
28. Jul, 2010 
11 Comments
Ah. Adventure Maps.
I was happily surprised that Mondays post about Project Adventure Maps took so much interest. As it should. Away with spreadsheets, checklists and grid prisons.
Bring on your crayons!
So. Adventure Mapping.
A highly playful, interactive and intuitive way of communicating complex elements in your project. Or just an excuse to go overboard on the lame jokes and awkward analogies.
I find it to do wonders for stakeholder analysis.
Stakeholder analysis is a technique to identify and analyze the stakeholders surrounding a project. It provides information on stakeholders and their relationships and expectations. A proper analysis of the stakeholders will help you to construct a project approach suited to the situation and will allow you to negotiate better with the stakeholders.
It works like this (you can click on the image to enlarge).
Invite some relevant people to brainstorm the stakeholder map. Get a whiteboard. This can be an old fashioned one, you know the kind you put on a wall. Or this can be an online version for remote organizations.
Draw an image of the goal. A treasure. A princess in a tower. A shovel.
Draw a line that flows towards the goal. Not a straight line. Create the suggestion that the Big Adventure is one that includes obstacles and challenges. The openness and flow stimulate creativity. It suggests you have room to think.
Now instead of a Gantt chart, you will be using a little brass gong to synchronize the teams flow.
Just kidding.
The next step is concerned with the question “Who are the stakeholders?”
For this, you basically draw people or smileys along your project road map. What is the first time they pop up? That’s the place where you draw them on the flow. If you draw them closer towards your path, they have more influence, are more important. Often you start with the obvious stakeholders, and the longer you talk about it, the more crowded the whiteboard gets.
The attitude of the stakeholders towards the project determines their behavior. Happy people are more likely to cooperate than an angry mob. With the use of smileys or + and – sign, try to assess the indicate of the stakeholder towards the project.
Not all stakeholders are created equal. Not everyone has to be involved. And you don’t want to have everyone messing around with your scope. So. Draw walls between your path and the stakeholders that don’t have or need an involvement. And when you draw, yell: “Block Them!” For those that need involvement draw a nice and inviting corridor (or arrow) between the flow and the stakeholder. I am still looking for a good phrase to say when you draw the arrow.
Now you have a nice Stakeholder Adventure Map.
Of course, it’s the process that is important. Not only the map.
The stakeholder analysis will help you create your communication strategy and project organization.
Read this post if you want to know more about Stakeholder Analysis.
Yet another excellent post! A great way to engage folk in stakeholder analysis – certainly more enjoyable than using the standard matrix of interest/influence. And if it is more interesting folk will engage better, and hence provide a better stakeholder analysis.
I like the idea of undertaking a time line along the project.
Good work!
Bas,
This is a smashing post. If you correlate the change curved path with the stockholders path they, more or less, overlap. This approach standardizes managerial studies and compares them on equal grounds.
Hats off for such an excellent post!
Bas,
Remember our joint new posts! Well, what we may do now is to plot the adventure map, emotional scan on the quadrants. This way we promote discussions, brainstorming and visualization of facts. The sky is open for wild imagination.
@Edward: thanks! and… exactly!
@Ali: thank you and yes I think it is an excellent idea to combine those elements. A visual representation would help it make more understandable.
mapping system give aclear illustrati0n ideas of manageing stakeholder
ithink it could be more detailed to contain new aspects or development
Hi Ibrahim,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I am definitely planning on adding details. E.g. in the area of expectations vs the goal. I you have any suggestions or additions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
Cheers
Bas
Mapping system is a perfect tool to enhance the project team to put their project at the right track. Its just like you’re navigating a ship, we use map to monitor the position of the craft whether it is on the recommended track or maybe out of the track.
Thanks for sharing us.
Excellent post. Perhaps the phrase for the attraction line should be “heart”, because we’d love to have these people involved in our project.