Identifying who holds a claim on a piece of work and classifying those claims, so that attention is allocated deliberately rather than by whoever shouts loudest.
Stakeholder analysis produces a classification, and the classification is only worth the decisions it changes. The common form plots power against interest on a square and reads a handling strategy off each quadrant. Richer forms add attributes: the salience model adds legitimacy and urgency, which is what lets it distinguish a claim that is rightful but powerless from one that is merely loud. Any classification decays, because the attributes it rests on are acquired and lost as circumstances change, so the analysis is re-run at stage gates rather than filed at initiation.
See also
A stakeholder classification that sorts claims by three attributes, power, legitimacy and urgency, producing seven classes plus the nonstakeholder.
A stakeholder holding power, legitimacy and urgency at once, whose claim takes priority over every other claim on the work.
Where this comes up
One row per stakeholder, one column per engagement level, and two marks per row. The distance between the two marks is the only thing on the grid you can actually act on.
Three attributes, seven classes, one question: whose claim gets attention first. Hold all three and you are a definitive stakeholder, and definitive stakeholders do not wait.
A reward is set in advance and conditional. Recognition is retrospective, unexpected and free. Most project managers control the second and none of the first, which decides where the effort goes.