| name | stakeholder-identification |
| argument-hint | [initiative] |
| description | Map every stakeholder before engaging anyone. Use when launching an initiative, scoping discovery, or building an engagement plan from scratch. |
| intent | Produce a comprehensive, equity-aware stakeholder set before any engagement begins. Combines broad brainstorm with structured categorization (Allies / Audiences / Influencers, R/P/D marking), an explicit equity and bias check, and a disciplined narrowing to the 2-3 stakeholders to understand deeply first. Designed to run as a solo exercise or a kickoff workshop. Feed outputs directly into stakeholder-mapping for prioritization. |
| type | component |
| best_for | ["Launching a new initiative where the stakeholder landscape is unmapped and influence networks are unknown","Scoping a discovery sprint to define who to research, interview, and recruit","Preparing a PRD stakeholder section with a validated, comprehensive list before writing requirements","Onboarding to a new product domain and needing to map allies, gatekeepers, and decision-makers quickly","Pressure-testing an existing stakeholder list for blind spots, bias, and missing edge-case populations"] |
| scenarios | ["Who are all the stakeholders for this initiative?","Are we missing anyone important in our stakeholder map?","Help me prepare the stakeholder section of my PRD","Who should we recruit for discovery research?"] |
| sources | ["MITRE Innovation Toolkit — Stakeholder Identification Canvas: https://itk.mitre.org/toolkit-tools/stakeholder-identification-canvas/","MITRE Innovation Toolkit — Community Map: https://itk.mitre.org/toolkit-tools/community-map/"] |
| theme | stakeholder-comms |
| estimated_time | 20-30 min |
Stakeholder Identification
Purpose
Map every stakeholder before engaging anyone. This skill produces a comprehensive, equity-aware stakeholder set — not just the obvious sponsors and users, but the gatekeepers, the impacted communities, and the voices your team defaults to overlooking.
Most PM stakeholder lists are written from memory in five minutes. They reliably capture executives, product peers, and the most vocal users. They reliably miss the marginalized user groups who bear the product's consequences without having the organizational power to shape its decisions. This skill forces a slower, more structured brainstorm that builds the foundation for every engagement decision that follows.
Use this before stakeholder-mapping (which prioritizes) and before stakeholder-engagement-advisor (which plans per-stakeholder outreach). Identification comes first — you cannot prioritize people you haven't named.
Input
Works best with: The initiative, product, or decision you're mapping stakeholders for.
Also useful: Stakeholders already on your list (the skill's job is to find who's missing), org context, and affected communities.
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 what the initiative is and who it touches, then runs the equity-aware sweep.
Example invocation: Identify stakeholders for migrating all customers to the new billing system by Q4.
Key Concepts
Allies, Audiences, Influencers — The three categories that clarify stakeholder relationship to your work. Allies actively support the initiative; audiences are impacted by it; influencers shape opinion or decisions without being directly affected. Sorting stakeholders this way reveals who to recruit, who to inform, and who to persuade — three different engagement jobs.
R/P/D Marking — Tagging each stakeholder as a provider of Resources (budget, headcount, access), Permission (approval to proceed, regulatory clearance), or Decision-making authority (final say). This quickly surfaces who can fund, block, or green-light your initiative versus who is merely interested. One stakeholder can hold multiple tags.
Equity Lens — Deliberately stretching the list to include stakeholders who are often excluded: marginalized user populations, frontline employees, downstream communities, people who bear the product's consequences but lack organizational power to influence its design. Without this step, teams optimize for loud, well-resourced voices and build products that fail the quieter majority.
