Stakeholders

A Stakeholder is someone who is or may be affected by something someone does (or does not do). In a SystemsEngineering Context, this can be conveniently summarised as "The Who of Requirements". The Who of Requirements is more profoundly Complex than the scant attention usually given to the subject suggests.

In the Glossary db, the definition of Stakeholders is (20060726): "the critical parties and products with an interest in our project. Any person, group of people, or Product that has or we want to have an interest in our project should be considered Stakeholders." The ConceptGlossary, meanwhile, offers this definition of Stakeholder (PlanguageConcept *233, 20030603):

"A Stakeholder is any person, group or object, which has some direct or indirect interest in a System.

"Stakeholders can exercise control over both the immediate System operational characteristics, as well as over long-term System lifecycle considerations (such as portability, lifecycle costs, environmental considerations, and decommissioning of the System).

"The Parameter ‘Stakeholder’ can be used to specify one or more Stakeholders explicitly. We can attach Stakeholder information to any Elementary specification, or to a set of specifications, as appropriate."

The fact that I (AlanAJ) offer a third definition implies that I find both of the above unsatisfactory. Limiting the Concept to either a "project" or a "System" is unnecessary; all human Action (including inaction) has Stakeholders. Restricting the Concept to "critical" relationships is unhelpful; how do you differentiate between critical and non-critical? Extending the Concept to include "groups", "products" and "objects" may have practical benefits, since we do indeed need to consider these, but we look to Stakeholders primarily to define our actions' purpose or value, which are ultimately, with limited exceptions, human inputs.

The simplest scenario is one with a single Stakeholder. Consider a System conceived and implemented by a single person for their sole use and benefit. Consider how this person (you) has to trade off various uncertain costs (time, money) in return for perceived benefits (Function, Cost of operation, ease of use) and within certain constraints (skills and experience, operating environment). What drives you to invest more effort now? Is it really just the eventual benefits that you are consciously pursuing?

And what of the costs? How else could you be investing your current efforts? Who else might benefit from this alternative investment of effort? Whenever you could be doing something different, those who would benefit from that alternative are effectively paying for what you are actually doing, so even in our "simplest scenario" there are innumerable other people affected. In economics, the amount lost by not using Resources in their best alternative use is called (Begg, David et al. Foundations of Economics (2003)) the "opportunity Cost", so it is reasonable to refer to those who would benefit from an alternative course of Action as "opportunity Stakeholders" in the actual Action. We usually disregard "Stakeholder,:::::" class="wiki wiki_page">opportunity stakeholders". Even when we have absolute control over the way certain Resources are used, we consider alternative uses only to a limited extent, if at all. How could it be otherwise? There is never time enough to enumerate all the alternatives, let alone evaluate them!

In organisational contexts, the range of alternatives is usually more circumscribed. Although the organisation might seem to have the power of many individuals added together, this is so only for a limited Scope of Action: the insurance company cannot simply start running an airline or supplying groceries. The "core" business is somewhat fixed and the peripheral activities are somewhat limited. Likewise, the allocation of Resources within the organisation is subject to many constraints. So the usual Context might be thought of as having many fairly passive Stakeholders: people who are not very obviously affected by what happens, within a fairly broad range of possible outcomes (including, as a minimum, Complete failure to deliver any value at the full Cost of all committed Resources). In other words, the "opportunity Stakeholders" are Stakeholders in the Process for committing Resources; once the Resources are committed, they have an interest in only exceptional outcomes. They have this in common with many other people, however, people we can refer to generally as "Stakeholder,:::::" class="wiki wikinew text-danger tips">exception stakeholders".