Stakeholder map template: decision rights, evidence and what each row loses

One row per person who can approve, block or quietly undo the change: a decision right, a tagged source, what they lose. Blank, and filled from the worked case.

The provenance convention, shared by the four templates that carry claims about the business

This legend belongs to the pack, not only to this template. It sits here because the stakeholder map is usually the first file anyone opens, and because the habit it enforces is the one that takes longest to build. It governs four of the six templates, the four that hold claims about the business: this map, the process, the requirements register and the rule register. The review log and the one-page summary carry no tags at all, and they should not - a log row names the reviewer and the date the objection came from, and the one-pager repeats numbers the register has already tagged.

Nothing enters one of those four documents without a tag saying where it came from. Not a stakeholder claim, not a process timing, not a rule, not an acceptance criterion. A fact with no tag is a fact nobody can check, and a document built out of those is exactly what this pack exists to replace.

Tags combine when a claim has more than one origin. [MINE, OPEN, OQ-01] reads as "a number I chose, still unresolved, tracked as open question 1". Put the question id inside the tag so a reader can find it in one search.

The right-hand column assumes your reader can reach the source. The worked case in this pack leaves the retailer unnamed on purpose, so a reader cannot open that particular policy, and the case says so on its own face. If you make the same choice, write down that you made it and what it costs.

Add tags of your own where you have access this pack's worked case did not have: [INTERVIEW 2026-04-14], [EXPORT], [OBSERVED ON SITE]. The list is not sacred. The rule is that every tag says where the fact came from and whether a reader can go and check it.

One thing to know about every example row in this pack. They all come from the same worked case, and that case was built from public sources alone. Nobody inside that company was asked anything. That is why no example row anywhere in these six templates cites a workshop, an interview or anyone inside that company confirming something - the two dated sessions in the review log are two peers reading my document as a favour, not the retailer - and why owners that could not be named from public sources are left open rather than filled in with a plausible job title.

How to fill this in

Fill one row per person who can approve, block or quietly undo this change, and write each role as a decision rather than as a job title. Every claim in the gain and lose columns needs a tagged source in the evidence column, even when that tag is [MINE] - the stakeholder map is where analysts guess the most and admit it the least. Twelve boxes copied off an org chart takes ten minutes and proves nothing; six rows with a decision right and a source behind each one take an afternoon and are hard to fake.

What goes in each column

• Name / role. A person where you have one, a named role where you do not. "Finance" is not a stakeholder. "The person who signs off refund policy in finance" is a stakeholder with a missing name, which is a different and much more useful thing to write down.
• What they decide (decision right). The sentence they can say in a meeting that stops the work or changes it. If you cannot phrase it as "can approve X", "can veto Y" or "can send it back after Z", you have recorded an interest, not a decision right.
• What they gain. What improves for that person, in their week. Not what improves for the company.
• What they lose. Time, control, headcount, a number they are measured on, a workaround they built themselves and rather like. Every row loses something. An empty cell here means the row has not been thought about yet.
• Evidence. Where the two previous columns come from: a document and its section, a sentence someone said and when, a public source, or an inference of your own. In this template the tags carry that job, one tag per claim, in this column: [POLICY], [HELP], [THREADS n=10], [WALKTHROUGH], [LAW], [MINE], [OPEN]. [MINE] is allowed anywhere. An untagged claim is not.
• How to reach them. The actual route, not the org chart. A calendar invite, their manager, the weekly returns call, ten minutes standing on the warehouse floor. When you have no access and no public source names a route, the cell is [OPEN] rather than a plausible-sounding guess. Inventing a route is the cheapest lie in the document and the easiest one to be caught in, because somebody will try it.

The map

The row in italics is an example, taken from the worked case in this pack: returns handling at a mid-size online retailer, built from public sources. There is no client name in it because there is no client, and nobody at that retailer was asked anything. That is why every claim in the evidence cell carries its own tag and the last column carries [OPEN] instead of a route somebody told me about. Delete the row before you send yours.

Why that row and not the Head of Customer Care. The head of the department is the obvious entry and the least interesting one. In a project with access that role is in every meeting, agrees with the project, and its row writes itself. The returns goods-in lead is never in the meeting where the refund window gets shortened, and is the one who can hand the item back and unmake the decision. If your map has no row like that, you have mapped the people who will attend the kick-off, not the people who determine whether this works.

Open questions from this map

One line per person you could not source, name or reach. Blank slots stay open rather than being quietly filled with a guess.

An open question with no fallback in the last column is a wish. Write the fallback even when it is unattractive, because the unattractive fallback is what gets the answer out of people.

Before you call this done

1. Which row loses something? Read the "what they lose" column on its own. If every row gains and nobody loses, you have written the pitch deck, not the organisation, and the resistance you meet in month two will arrive with no name attached to it.
2. Which decision rights could you defend if challenged? Take any row and imagine someone asking "who told you she can veto that?" Rows where the honest answer is "it seemed obvious" are inferences, and they belong in the evidence column tagged [MINE].
3. Is there a cell anywhere on this page with no tag in the evidence column behind it? Read the map once looking only for that. An untagged claim about what a person gains, loses or decides is the row a reviewer will pull on first, because it is the one that costs nothing to write.
4. Who touches this work but has never been in a meeting about it? Walk the process end to end and name every pair of hands. The people who handle the exceptions are usually missing from maps built out of an org chart, and the exceptions are where your project will be judged.

How long this takes. Sixty to ninety minutes, once the reading is done. Most of that is the evidence column.

The one mistake. If a row does not tell me what that person loses when the project succeeds, the row is decoration.

Scorecard checks that apply to this artifact: 04 Each stakeholder has a decision right, not just a job title 06 Every row names a person or a specific role, never "the business", "the users" or "IT" 07 Every row cites where its claim came from: a session and its date, a policy section, or a thread anyone can open 08 Every row says what that person loses if the change goes through

Template 1 of the Proof Pack, from analify.com. Use it in your own applications and at work, including commercially. Do not resell it as your own product.

In the worked case

Section 2 of the worked case shows this artifact filled to the standard the template asks for: returns and refunds at a mid-size online retailer, built from public sources only, with every number tagged. Read it there, then come back to the blank.

The scorecard checks for this artifact

One page naming everyone who can approve, block or quietly derail the change.

All twenty-five checks, with the scoring scale: the scorecard.

Notes that work on this artifact

Next template

All six templates · The worked case · The scorecard